Funds for breast cancer treatment have been announced after patients protested in Mexico City on Thursday and Friday to demand that the federal government reinstate funding for the Breast Cancer Foundation (Fucam) to allow it to continue providing free treatment.
The foundation announced Thursday that it had run out of resources with which to provide free medical services because it had not reached a funding agreement with the National Institute of Health for Well-Being (Inasabi), a new government department tasked with providing universal healthcare.
Fucam previously accessed public funds via the Seguro Popular healthcare scheme, which was replaced by a program run by Insabi on January 1.
“The foundation [has been] forced to stop free [breast cancer treatment] because it lacks supplies and medications,” Fucam said in a statement.
But it announced Friday afternoon that an agreement had been reached whereby Insabi will fund those treatments that had been initiated prior to December 31. However, new patients will have to pay user fees based on their economic means.
On Thursday, about 20 Fucam breast cancer patients blocked Tlalpan Avenue near the Valley of México University to demand that the government guarantee free treatment and medicines, and provide funds to the foundation.
The placards they held up sent a clear message to President López Obrador, or AMLO as he is commonly known. “We want to live,” said one, while others read “AMLO, don’t abandon women with cancer” and “abandonment no, agreement, yes.”
Accompanied by family members and friends, another group of breast cancer victims protested outside the National Palace on Friday, chanting “we want to live,” “subsidy for Fucam,” “I’m fighting for my life, I’m fighting for Fucam” and “if you’re listening presidente, Fucam is presente.”
The breast cancer patients also submitted a letter to López Obrador at a citizen’s attention office at the National Palace, Reforma reported.
“We are sick people with scant resources. We have no possibility of paying for private treatment, we will die … if we’re not attended to at Fucam. … We ask you, as the head of state, to remedy our situation,” it read.
The Breast Cancer Foundation said it was providing free treatment, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery, to more than 8,500 breast cancer patients of limited means.
Just wag your finger if you don't want your windshield washed.
The horns blared all around the driver, the Frenchman, to my left. The light had been green for four seconds, but a kid armed with a bottle of detergent and a flat rubber wiper was still in the middle of soaping up the glass.
“Merde,” he cursed in a Gallic accent, and began to tease the gas pedal. The young snipe didn’t flinch. Taking up a suspended position on the hood of the car, his legs dangling over the now rolling wheel, he methodically wiped away the remaining soap with five flicks before the other passengers, myself and the cameraman, could protest.
“Stop! Are you trying to kill him?” we shouted bilingually. The brakes came on, and the young man jumped off. He glared at the Frenchman but from the passenger side my hand was already brandishing a 20-peso note aloft.
Twenty pesos for the service was a first, probably for everyone involved, but the event had been just as unique.
Having been conveyed at least five meters back to his starting position beneath the traffic lights on the hood of our car, the young man changed his looked of bemusement for one of pleasant surprise at the sight of the blue plastic note, and skipped between us and the honking cars made to wait.
He plucked the note from the hand and as we looked up, sighed collectively at his forgiveness and exchanged a muted laugh, the car behind us blared his horn again. He needn’t have bothered; the light had gone back to red.
After six years in Mexico, it’s easy to become accustomed to the nuance of context and situations. The Frenchman, despite having married a Mexican and living here for three years, doesn’t drive, and has therefore missed out on an entire sub-section of driving culture in this country – the limpiaparabrisas.
The remonstrations weren’t harsh; the kid hadn’t seemed angry, and even if he had wanted to identify us it would have been impossible. The Frenchman had parked on a yellow-painted curb the day before in Querétaro and our license plate had been removed.
I sympathized with him. Driving in Mexico is no easy business, and when it comes to the ins-and-outs, the do’s-and-don’ts of the autopista, stoplights can be perplexing, and the only way to have an idea is through experience.
Should you find yourself facing the rapid advance of a soap-toting chap at a stoplight and you don’t want the service, the universal Mexican gesture is the wagging finger – to and fro – above the steering wheel. That’s to be respected, and you’ll find the majority simply pass you by.
If however, the individual offering the service has caught you off-guard, then the cultural rule here is – tough luck. He’s going to finish the job and expect payment in kind. Their logic is, you’re driving a car, so of course you’re aware of everything in front of you; if you haven’t given the wagging finger it’s because you want your glass washed. Maybe it will make the things going on in front of you more visible. And you can see their point.
I tend to make the most of the consequences of a dozy moment and ask them to do the rear windscreen while they’re at it.
What you certainly shouldn’t do, unless you’re after a squirt of detergent through the gap in your window, is activate your own mechanical wipers, curse at them, or take them on a car-hood hayride back to their starting point.
They’re just trying to make a living, and Mexico can be a hard place for the guys on the other side of the glass.
Alasdair Baverstock is a freelance foreign correspondent and reporter for CGTN who has covered Mexico and Latin America for nearly a decade. You can follow him across social media at @alibaverstock.
Francisco Flores bakes more than 3,000 products every week.
Thirty-eight years ago, Francisco Flores Robrero began learning the delicate craft of breadmaking. “Cakes are the hardest,” he explained, “and biscuits are the most fun because they come in so many varieties; you can never get bored.”
From a humble family, Francisco had to find work after he finished primary school.
A resourceful man, he found a job in Bodega Aurrera, one of the Walmart brands, where he worked for five years until he persuaded Porfilio Espinosa, an established baker in Tapachula, Chiapas, to be his mentor.
Porfilio passed away more than 20 years ago, but Francisco is still honouring his master by producing more than 3,000 products for the bakery every week. He bakes for five hours per day, six days per week and divides his remaining time between attending to customers and supervising his two apprentices.
Sales have decreased lately. Francisco puts it down to higher local unemployment, although he hopes that things will pick up in June. “It’s usually busier when it’s cooler,’ he explains. Francisco’s definition of “cooler” is 33 C!
There is a deep curiosity behind Francisco’s eyes and a wonderful smile that magically converts his appearance from stern seriousness to wonderful warmth. It was a face that lured me from the other side of a busy street.
Initially cautious about why a reporter would be interested in him, by the end of our conversation he admitted that he was thrilled to have had his first real conversation with a foreigner.
Sánchez: new measures to combat crimes against women.
Interior Minister Olga Sánchez Cordero admitted Friday that serious action by the government to combat violence against women has “arrived late,” but she said it is now committed to tackling the problem head on.
After a three-hour meeting with officials from several government agencies, Sánchez told reporters that any report of a missing woman or girl will immediately activate search protocols, whether or not a crime is believed to have been committed.
She requested the support of the judicial branch, asking that courts issue measures for the protection of women without the need for a formal report of gender violence.
She also said that the federal government will launch campaigns for the prevention of violence against women in all its forms and consolidate various government programs to protect women and girls.
Sánchez added that the government has identified the municipalities with the highest rates of violence against women in the country. They will be the focus of a comprehensive campaign of preventative measures, victim services and criminal prosecution.
“We’re working every day, coordinating, instructing, monitoring and implementing actions to prevent and attend these types of violence. We recognize that we have arrived late to deliver this message, that there have been limitations, that public policy has not been coordinated on many occasions nor been effective enough to confront this serious problem,” she said.
The former Supreme Court justice used Friday’s press conference to assert her dedication to the cause of eradicating gender violence and to implore feminists in the government not to “forget our origins, much less the social demands of gender.”
She added that the administration of President López Obrador is committed to reducing gender inequality and asserted that he is dedicated to the feminist cause.
Her defense of the president follows accusations that López Obrador has not taken the issue seriously. On Thursday morning, he described female protesters at the National Palace as a “feminist collective” that opposes “the moral regeneration we’re promoting.”
“I respect their views but don’t share them,” the president said. “I believe we have to moralize the country, purify public life and strengthen cultural, moral and spiritual values.”
When femicides came up at a press conference earlier this month, López Obrador appeared annoyed that the question interrupted his plans to talk about raffling the presidential plane. “I don’t want femicides to overshadow the lottery.”
Copper goods from Michoacán among products at Mexico City fair.
The Mexico In the Heart of Mexico tourism and culture fair has returned to the zócalo in Mexico City, bringing together dancers, chefs, artisans and tourism representatives from every state in the country.
The visual centerpiece of the fair is the Great Pyramid, a temporary exhibition space housing some of the most iconic archaeological pieces from the museums of the city’s Historic Center.
Visitors can satisfy their grumbling stomachs at the Kitchen Pavilion, which offers traditional dishes from all across the country and tasty delights from some of the most renowned Mexican chefs.
Mexico’s numerous folkloric dance traditions will be on display on the main stage, as well as concerts, art exhibitions and other cultural events.
But visitors won’t want to miss the artisans’ tent that organizers are calling The Serpent of Quetzalcóatl. Over 500 artisans from all corners of Mexico have been invited to the fair to sell their unique folk art and other products.
The stalls are filled with everything from embroidered blouses called huipiles to guitars made in Michoacán to bacanora, an agave distillate from Sonora similar to mezcal and tequila. The list of quality handmade products for sale is virtually endless.
There will also be tourism representatives from each state to provide information on the Magical Towns, festivals, gastronomy and other attractions for tourists in the places they call home.
The fair is already in full swing in the Mexico City zócalo and will run through next week, ending on Sunday, March 1. It is open from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. each day and admission is free.
Charros in their unique outfits at Tlaxcala Carnival.
With rich traditions, brilliantly colored costumes and masked revelers parading through the streets, carnival is in full swing in Tlaxcala this week.
The celebration began on Thursday with an inaugural parade in Tlaxcala city in which 80 troupes of costumed dancers romped down the streets on a route that included various government buildings, public plazas, the Tlaxcala Art Museum and the bullfighting ring.
The party continues through the weekend until Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, which begins the Catholic observance of Lent.
A signature feature of such festivities in Tlaxcala are the capering huehues (“old men” in Náhuatl), dancers who don colorful costumes and masks representing old people. In total, the carnival celebrations will include 387 troupes of huehues from 40 municipalities across the state.
The biggest party is in the capital, Tlaxcala, but visitors can join in the festivities in nearly every town and city in the state.
Pantola is a good place in which to observe the fiestas. Here troupes perform the dance around la garrocha, or maypole, as well as that of La Jota, a traditional dance from Spain.
The charros, or cowboys, in Tlaxcala don costumes totally distinct from others called by the same name elsewhere in the country. Instead of the traditional cowboy outfit most recognize as the uniform of the mariachi band, these charros wear frilled capes, huehue masks and hats adorned with huge, colorful feathers. Their dance is a must-see at Tlaxcala’s carnival.
The fun may have already begun, but there are still lots of parades, workshops, photography competitions, drawing classes for children and other events to celebrate carnival in Tlaxcala before it’s all over on Wednesday.
But if you can’t make it to Tlaxcala, there are carnival festivities going on in Veracruz and Mazatlán as well.
Students at a secondary school in Sonora have invented a building block made of recycled materials with which they plan to annex a bedroom onto the house of a fellow classmate from a low-income family.
Calling their ecology club Jóvenes Delfines (Dolphin Youth), the students from the coastal town of Bahía de Kino, Sonora, created Confib (from the Spanish words for “fibrous concrete”), a block made from recycled paper, sand and cement.
Their biology teacher, José Valenzuela, has worked on the project with several generations of students for over 10 years. He said that they get the paper from former students who donate old books and notebooks they no longer use.
“We tear the books up with our hands and then we soak them in water. Then we put this into a type of blender we created ourselves. After that, we filter out the residues and mix it with sand and cement. We use around 15 textbooks to make 20 blocks,” said Valenzuela.
The student for whom they plan to build a new bedroom is Ángel, whose entire family lives in a crowded one-room house.
“Ángel comes from a low-income family. … My students told me last year about the needs of their classmate. We went to visit his father and proposed the idea of building a new room based on our project,” said Valenzuela.
He and his team of students currently have around 40% of the materials they need to build a room for Ángel. They will need about 3,000 more blocks to begin building, and Valenzuela is confident that they will reach their goal, despite a lack of funds and materials.
The main obstacle is the cement, as it is the most expensive material to obtain. Valenzuela hopes other institutions will join them to expand the project and make the blocks a more viable construction material option in the region.
“What we’re proposing … is for other institutions to come and take advantage of our area, which has a rich ecosystem,” he said.
Jóvenes Delfines boasts a membership of about 20 students. They said they chose the name “because we are from a fishing region and dolphins are one of the most intelligent animals in the world.”
Paul Salopek leads his mule in eastern Turkey. John Stanmeyer. Courtesy Out of Eden Walk.
Several years ago National Geographic magazine published what struck me as an absolutely astounding story. It stated that every single human being on the face of the earth today is a descendant of a rather small number of people (perhaps only a few hundred) who emigrated out of Africa around 60,000 years ago, embarking on a trek that would quite literally take them to the very ends of the earth. This conclusion was based on advances in genetics and DNA samples taken worldwide.
The fact that we are all descended from Africans had impressed me, but I was especially interested in the fact that most of our ancestors had crossed the Bab Al Mandeb Strait over to the Arabian Peninsula and worked their way north through what is now Saudi Arabia.
This resonated with my own 13-year study of Saudi Arabia’s caves. I knew that the principal sources for water and shelter (from heat, cold and especially from wind) along vast stretches of western Arabia are lava tubes: caves up to 20 kilometers long and 40 meters wide which are located (sometimes in great numbers) among the 80,000 square kilometers of lava fields near which many of those early forebears must surely have passed.
That map of mankind’s great migration must have impacted many people around the globe, among them a man named Paul Salopek, one of the world’s great journalists and two-time winner of the coveted Pulitzer Prize. Salopek really took the story of humanity’s long walk to heart.
Following clues provided by DNA studies, he mapped out a route all the way from Ethiopia to Patagonia — 33,796 kilometers — and proposed to walk all that distance (except for a couple of short stretches over water) during what he first imagined would take seven years of his life. That was seven years ago, and he has still not reached the halfway point on his odyssey.
Proposed route for Paul Salopek’s Out of Eden Walk.
Why did he want to do this?
“Long-term storytelling,” he replied. “It’s not an athletic event. … I want to examine the great issues of our day at three miles an hour … to watch the world around me and to get into people’s lives.”
Salopek started his journey in January 2013, crossed the Red Sea and, accompanied by a Bedu and two pack camels, slowly walked his way north through Saudi Arabia, always talking to local people, listening to their worries, hopes and dreams, and reporting short, fascinating dispatches every few days.
“I am on a journey,” he says. “I am in pursuit of an idea, a story, a chimera, perhaps a folly. I am chasing ghosts. Starting in humanity’s birthplace in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, I am retracing, on foot, the pathways of the ancestors who first discovered the Earth at least 60,000 years ago. This remains by far our greatest voyage.”
“We know so little about them. … They straddled the strait called Bab el Mandeb — the “gate of grief” that cleaves Africa from Arabia — and then exploded, in just 2,500 generations, a geological heartbeat, to the remotest habitable fringe of the globe. Millennia behind, I follow.”
National Geographic cover, December 2013. Seven years were not enough.
When I contacted the indefatigable walker, he noticed I was living in Jalisco and told me that he also had lived here:
“I grew up in Zapopan, on the fringe of Colonia Seattle,” he said. “I would go drop fishing lines down holes in Agua Azul Park to fish for rats. Took buses into the Barranca de Oblatos to go hunting with my neighbor Lalo’s hand-made flintlock. It was a fairly wild area back then. We used river stones as ammo and never hit anything. … My playgrounds were the guamuchil trees, garbage-strewn lots and lush green corn fields around the edge of the city. Some of my boyhood friends died young of curable diseases. We had fun.”
Salopek’s Mexican adventures didn’t stop there.
“Some years ago, I rode a mule from Douglas, Arizona, to Michoacán, down the spine of the Sierra Madre. A memorable journey.”The story of this 2,090-kilometer journey, which retraced the route traversed by Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz in 1890, is told — with reflections on Salopek’s boyhood in Mexico — in the June 2000 edition of National Geographic magazine.
In “Literature as Lucha Libre,” a lesson on writing for The American Scholar, Salopek reflects on a perhaps surprising aspect of his youth in Colonia Seattle:
“My greatest literary inspiration at this time was a comic book called Kalimán. Kalimán was a vaguely Sikh superhero in white tights who spoke Spanish. (These) adventures introduced the notions of cliffhangers and the second act. Kalimán was always going into trances, slowing his metabolism down into deathlike comas. Even then, as a child, this struck me as the perfect Mexican super power, a defense against 1 billion years of fatalism.
In Ethiopia, A’urta (Traded for a Cow) gets a reassuring head scratch. John Stanmeyer. Courtesy Out of Eden Walk.
“Soon I was drawing my own. My cartoons featured schizoid child geniuses who lived on desert islands and a race of woolly mammoths who lived underground. I rented out my comics, thus discovering editing and royalties. Kids in huaraches paid me 20 centavos to sit on the dirt sidewalk outside my house, page through stacks of my crude narratives and offer mostly negative textual analyses.”
I asked Salopek how much his years in Mexico had influenced his life.
“Mexico informs everything I do,” he replied, “because it’s my childhood. And like childhood, that Mexico of mule-plowed fields is fading fast. Maybe it’s gone. I grew up between 1870 and 1970. For better or worse NAFTA closed that gap. ‘El México que se nos fue’ and all that. It occurs to me from time to time that maybe I’m out looking for the older Mexico elsewhere. Don’t we all do this? And isn’t it always a lunatic enterprise?”
While examining the great issues of our day at three miles an hour, Salopek also has time to appreciate nature as some of our ancient forefathers must have. His latest dispatch comes from the hills of India’s northeastern frontier. He had been told that “in this place, there is nothing.”
Here are a few of Salopek’s comments on that “nothing”:
“In Umrangso, the tree frogs announced their love in the xylophone scales of bamboo wind chimes. I listened to gibbons rocket through the treetops along the Jiri River, dislodging showers of leaves and whooping like soccer hooligans. And everywhere, I overheard the hills speaking the sibilant dialects of unbounded water. The ionic hum of waterfalls. The white hiss of streams. The hard-knuckled rap of monsoon rain on roof tin. Even atop the highest ridges — where I expected nothing but damp wind — came the faint, quavering sigh of wild rivers far below.”
[soliloquy id="101827"]
Paul Salopek’s dispatches are a delight to read. Some are pure poetry, some show us how people in the most remote places are resonating with problems that impact our everyday lives. An example is his story of Robin Naiding, mild-mannered headman of the Indian village of Baga Dima, who was affected by the global crisis of conscience about the use of plastic straws and decided to start making them out of bamboo, resulting in a business which has won the hearts of thirsty Indians in megacities like Delhi and Bangalore.
Salopek has logged over 10,000 miles on his storytelling project and after 18 months in northern India, is about to enter China. Some time ago it became clear to him that his odyssey was going to take far longer than the seven years he had originally projected. Instead of speeding up, Salopek decided to slow down. By now he had discovered that good journalism, like love and gourmet cooking, must never be rushed.
This is slow journalism, par excellence.
You will find Paul Salopek’s recent and earlier dispatches on National Geographic’s Out of Eden page.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 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.
The mayor of Taxco, Guerrero, Marcos Parra, center, addresses members of the LeBaron family and activist José Díaz Navarro. Lexie Harrison-Cripps
In the face of ongoing death threats and the belief that those behind a brutal attack on their family in Sonora in November will never be prosecuted, members of the LeBaron family continue to campaign for peace and justice throughout Mexico.
On November 4 three members of the extended LeBaron family were traveling with their children when their three cars were attacked near La Mora, Sonora. Of the 17 women and children on the road that day, the three mothers and six of their children were killed in the attacks, including a pair of 8-month-old twins.
The LeBaron family still don’t know the reason for the November attack but believe it to have been carried out by the cartel known as La Línea. Local press reported that Mario “El Mayo” H., leader of the gang, was arrested in December for the attack. But the Attorney General’s Office would only confirm that as of January 7 three people had been arrested in the investigation. Their names were not released.
Because some members of the LeBaron family are joint Mexican-U.S. citizens, the U.S. media and government are watching the situation. President López Obrador has granted the family police protection during their peace and justice campaign. That is likely an attempt to shield Mexico from the negative attention that would be associated with any further attacks on the family, according to Bryan LeBaron, the cousin of Rhonita Maria Miller, one of the mothers slain in the November attack.
López Obrador is facing increasing pressure to demonstrate that his security policy — “hugs not bullets” — is working in the face of rising crime levels and recent security blunders such as the bungled attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán, the son of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán in October.
Federal Police officers guard the LeBaron family as they meet people in Chilapa, Guerrero. Lexie Harrison-Cripps
The executive secretary of the National Public Security System recorded 35,588 homicides and femicides in 2019, the highest annual murder rate on record. The Mexico Peace Index 2019 estimates that the cost of such violence amounted to US $268 billion in 2018, or 24% of GDP.
Bryan LeBaron acknowledged that it was unfair for his family to have federal protection when towns and villages also need it. However, he said, it gives the family an unprecedented opportunity to shine a light on the issue. To ignore this opportunity would be “cowardice,” explained LeBaron, who is considering moving his family closer to Mexico City to enable him to campaign on a full time basis.
Julian LeBaron’s decade-long fight against the cartels began in 2009 when he refused to pay a US $1-million ransom for the release of his brother Erik. Miraculously, Erik was released unharmed a few days later. But Julian’s brother Benjamin and brother-in-law, Luis Widmar, did not share the same good fortune and were brutally murdered two months later.
That ultimately led Julian LeBaron to join the poet and peace activist Javier Sicilia in the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity.
A little over a decade later, in January 2020, dozens of family representatives once again joined Sicilia in a peace march from Cuernavaca, Morelos, to Mexico City. Then in February, despite cartel threats and road blocks, four members of the LeBaron family joined activist José Díaz Navarro and 300 protesters in Chilapa, Guerrero, for the first peace march in five years.
Díaz became an activist following the murder and decapitation of his brothers in Chilapa in November 2014. His five-year campaign for justice — during which several attempts on his life were made — has culminated in 12 arrest warrants, but so far no suspects have been detained. That detail is unsurprising given that almost 90% of murderers avoid arrest, according to the NGO Impunidad Cero (Zero Impunity).
Adrian LeBaron speaks at a press conference in Iguala, Guerrero. With him are Julian LeBaron, center, and Bryan LeBaron. Lexie Harrison-Cripps
With that in mind, Adrian LeBaron predicts that his daughter’s killers will never be prosecuted for murder.
His concerns center around how municipal police chiefs are appointed. One of those arrested for his daughter’s murder, the director of public security in the municipality of Janos near the location of the attack, has held the position for 13 years through various municipal administrations, he explained. LeBaron’s concern is that police chiefs can only survive that long with cartel support.
Many local news outlets have proposed reasons for the attacks, including cartel involvement, a family history of violence and local water disputes. The initial reports from Security Secretary Alfonzo Durazo suggested that the victims were caught in the crossfire between two warring cartels. None of these theories have made any headway. What is clear, however, is that the LeBaron family and many other victims of violence in Mexico are subjected to a culture of victim-blaming rather than examining the criminals causing the violence.
Blame is also happening at the state and international levels. López Obrador blames the increasing violence in Mexico on the “corrupt conservatives” of the previous government. Christopher Landau, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, addressed international blame in December when he said, “it’s easy to lose yourself, one country blaming another. … We will never beat [the criminals] if we are always fighting and blaming each other.”
Meanwhile, the LeBarons are aware that their lives continue to be in danger. What they are doing is unpopular with the cartels. Despite this, they are undeterred, confirmed Bryan LeBaron, who remains surprisingly positive and proactive. “We are not looking to show what is wrong,” he explained, “but instead ask what we can do.”
He explained that they plan to visit other areas of Mexico to better understand local issues. They are working with senior members of the judiciary to consider legal reforms that would combat corruption and the associated impunity rates.
Finally, they are looking at how technology could empower citizens, advance investigations and ultimately take back control of Mexico.
Foundation directors and students celebrate a new agreement to further the teaching of English.
A pair of prominent educational foundations in Mexico have forged an alliance to make English language instruction more accessible to young students in vulnerable sectors of the country.
The Anglo Mexican Foundation and the Fundación Mano Amiga signed an agreement to promote the certification of English teachers in at-risk areas located in 14 states.
The pesident of The Anglo Mexican Foundation, Víctor Treviño, said at the signing ceremony that the country has not taken advantage of its proximity to the United States, citing that only around 10% of Mexicans speak English.
“If Mexicans knew English, we would spare ourselves many problems,” he said.
He highlighted the importance of gaining command of the language for the cognitive and professional development of the next generations of Mexican professionals.
He said that there is no opportune age for acquiring a new language, citing a myth that it becomes impossible to do once someone reaches a certain age.
“The human brain is conditioned to learn several languages, so we shouldn’t believe that there exists a [favorable] age for doing so. Adults as well as children can learn English, even senior citizens,” he said.
The United Kingdom’s ambassador to Mexico, Corin Robertson, was the guest of honor at the event. She shared her experiences as a diplomat with the Mano Amiga students and others in attendance.
Fundación Mano Amiga executive director Enrique Castañeda Téllez Girón said that the network of schools in his foundation favors a holistic education for children and young people in order to effect positive change in society.
The foundation currently works with over 15,000 students in its 21 schools located in 14 states. He said that the agreement will have a direct impact on more than 10,000 families who live in vulnerable communities.
For The Anglo Foundation CEO Anthony McCarthy the strategic program represents the organization’s commitment to creating new educational opportunities in Mexico.
The foundation has dedicated itself to English language instruction and strengthening cultural ties between Mexico and Great Britain since 1943. Its headquarters are located in the San Rafael neighborhood of Mexico City.
