Swiss food and beverage multinational Nestlé will invest US $700 million to modernize its existing 16 factories in Mexico and build a new one in Veracruz.
The company said in a statement that it will install state-of-the-art technology in its plants to increase productivity, make its processes more efficient and boost production capacity.
The investment will create 400 direct jobs and 4,000 indirect ones over the coming years, Nestlé said.
The outlay includes US $200 million already announced for the first stage of construction of a coffee processing plant in Veracruz. First announced in December 2018, the plant will boast cutting-edge green technology that will reduce the use of water and energy, Nestlé said.
The plant is expected to begin operations in the last quarter of 2020 and process 20,000 tonnes of Mexican-grown coffee a year.
At a meeting with Economy Secretary Graciela Márquez Colín at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Nestlé CEO for the Americas Laurent Freixe said that innovation has played a key role in allowing the company to remain a leader in nutrition, health and well-being.
“We’ve directed our efforts to the construction of a solid and sustainable innovation ecosystem that allows us to continue exploring new technologies, production processes and business models in benefit of our consumers,” he said.
“The Mexican market is a priority for our operations because the confidence of our Mexican consumers has made it . . . the fifth most important market for the company in the world and the second in Latin America.”
Nestlé also announced that its Mexico subsidiary has been chosen as its information technology hub for the Americas, meaning that it will take a leading role in the “digital transformation of the company.”
The Paricutín volcano erupting in 1943, photographed by Bodil Christensen.
Don Raymundo Acosta of Angahuan was a lad of 15 in 1943 when a mini-volcano two meters high popped up in the cornfield of one Dionisio Pulido of the nearby village of Paricutín, shaking the earth with tremors and fiercely blowing fireworks into the sky.
The volcano eventually rose to a height of 410 meters, spewing lava over an area of 20 square kilometers of Michoacán and drawing the attention of volcanologists everywhere in the world.
“One of those volcanologists was quite extraordinary because he was also a great painter,” Don Raymundo commented to me. “His name was Gerardo Murillo and he was a wonderful artist as well as my good friend. He actually camped out in the cornfield even though he was right in the path of the lava.”
Eventually Murillo, popularly known as “Dr. Atl,” gained fame both as an expert on volcanoes (he wrote How a Volcano is Born and Grows – Paricutín), and also as the precursor of Mexico’s muralists.
Paricutín is the youngest of more than a thousand volcanic vents lying along the trans-Mexican volcanic belt, but what makes it unique is the fact that its entire “life cycle,” from birth to extinction, could be witnessed and studied by scientists. In 1997 it was listed among CNN’s Seven Natural Wonders of the World, alongside the Grand Canyon and Mount Everest.
The volcano seen from above. It mysteriously ceased erupting in 1952. Volcanian
In 1975 I rode a country bus into Angahuan. I was the only person on the bus who did not speak Purépecha and I was greatly impressed by the melodic sound of this curious language, whose closest relatives are Zuni and Quechua, and which to me sounded like the gentle tinkling of bells.
My aim was to visit a church, said to be half buried in the lava, and I truly had to follow my nose to do it, because there were no signs, no refresco vendors, no eager guides to show me the way. Halfway through a flat pine forest with trails going every which way, I came upon a skinny dog whose fur was the same color as the dark volcanic ash which covered every inch of the area. I called the dog Cenizas (Ashes) and we immediately became traveling companions.
Man’s Best Friend, however, showed his true colors when I placed my knapsack on the ground and opened it up. The moment a sandwich came to light, Cenizas flashed in like a bolt of lightning and gobbled it down. I had to climb a tree in order to find a safe refuge where I could eat the other one.
Eventually I found my way through the woods and located the lonely church tower which — without the snack and souvenir vendors of today — jutted from the lava like an apocalyptic symbol of the awesome power of nature and the foolishness and frailty of man.
I didn’t get any farther on that occasion, but 10 years later I convinced family and friends that we had to go camp in that famous pine forest so we could climb the volcano. At that time there was nothing remotely like a hotel in the area.
We carefully drove along a brecha consisting entirely of soft black ash and pitched our tents. The next morning my brother William and I had one of those brilliant ideas that should never be allowed to germinate. We had brought along plenty of coffee beans which we planned to grind using nothing but Paricutín basalt.
The volcano exhibits no thermal activity, but there are fumaroles in the vent next to it.
We easily found a large rock with a bowl-shaped surface as well as a flat stone to use as a mano, but oh how quickly we discovered that the art of grinding was a skill neither of us possessed! One bean at a time was slowly reduced to powder as the minutes ticked away and our empty stomachs grumbled in protest.
“What about the coffee?” shouted my wife Susy and her sister. “Er, maybe another hour,” we replied.
At long last, we accumulated enough of the precious powder to make our brew. As the coffee dripped through the filter, along came a Swiss tourist. Eyeing the coffee-colored rock in front of which we were kneeling, he logically inquired, “Vat are you doingk?”
“Ah, we are paying homage to the old gods. Would you like to taste our volcanic coffee?”
“Danke,” said the Swiss, who then filled his unfortunately large cup right to the brim, instantly using up 90% of our morning’s production. I dare not print the ladies’ comments on our goodwill gesture, but I’m sure that day represented the high point in Mexico-Swiss relations for the entire year.
Fortified by a few meager drops of volcano-ground coffee, we set off for Paricutín’s most celebrated site, El Templo de San Juan Parangaricutiro, forever buried in lava except for its towers, which still stand tall — albeit a bit crooked — after all these years.
Walking on volcanic rubble is anything but easy.
Although you may never succeed in pronouncing the name of this church, you can nevertheless climb down inside of it if you wish,and perhaps add a candle or flower to those decorating an image now known as the Christ of the Miracles, so called because it appears that the lava stopped right before it. Near the image there are chunks of volcanic rubble (instead of pews) upon which you can sit down and contemplate the mystery of why the painting was miraculously spared, but not the templo.
From the church we headed for the volcano itself, but we barely had time to climb the smaller cone next to Paricutín and to experience the strange sensation of hot gases shooting up our pant legs. Suddenly it was nearly sunset so we decided to head straight for our campsite, which we could see in the distance.
Alas, we learned the hard way that a straight line is not the shortest distance in a lava field. Every step we took was precarious; every chunk of lava twisted and turned beneath our feet, threatening a broken leg; many large pieces weighing hundreds of kilos were so delicately balanced that a touch could make them fall.
We seemed to move at a snail’s pace. On top of that, our water supply had long given out. All we had between us was one orange and this we saved until the last beam of sunlight slipped beneath the craggy skyline. Ah, I will never forget the celestial taste of my half of that orange, nor the arrival of the ladies at our campsite — when we finally got there — leading a burro carrying a full case of cold beer, most of which we gulped down within an hour.
As the years passed, development took place and today you’ll probably have a hard time getting lost or thirsty at Paricutín. It seems every living soul in Angahuan is now a professional guide and everywhere you turn there’s a restaurant or a hotel. Walking is no longer necessary as you can now rent a horse which, after a long ride, will deposit you at the foot of the volcano.
From there you should reach the crater lip in less than an hour, even though, as a 9-year-old girl who tried it told me, “every step forward in the loose ash is followed by two steps back.” However, she added, the view from the top is truly magnificent and well worth the five hours in the saddle.
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The village of Angahuan is fascinating. The older houses, called trojes, are made of wood with high, steep roofs; the 16th-century church was designed by a Moorish stonemason; and the women still wear colorful rebosos. All day long, visitors to the area will hear what sounds like chant coming out of powerful loudspeakers located in four different parts of Angahuan. All of it is in Purépecha and believe it or not, all of it is advertising.
The thundering speakers sing the praises of Doña María’s delicious corundas (a kind of tamal) and Doña Carmelita’s scrumptious buchepos (another kind of tamal). Unfortunately, all the loudspeakers bellow simultaneously, producing a cacophony that starts at 7:00am and continues until the last potential customer hits the sack. So much for the myth of the peaceful Indian village.
Paricutín volcano lies between Guadalajara and Mexico City. It can be reached in about five hours from the former, while from CDMX the drive will take closer to seven hours. I think it can be truly said that this site is unique in all the world. Visit it and, like Don Raymundo Acosta, you too will have a few tales to tell your great-grandchildren.
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.
Avocado exports from Jalisco increased almost 30% in 2019 even as producers in the state remained locked out of the lucrative United States market.
The director of the Jalisco Avocado Producers and Exporters Association (Apeajal) told the newspaper El Economista that 110,000 tonnes of the fruit were sent abroad from Jalisco last year, a 29.4% increase over the 85,000 tonnes exported in 2018.
Ignacio Gómez Arregui said that 35% of exports went to Canada, 25% to Japan and 30% to European countries, including France, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Belgium.
The remaining 10% went to Hong Kong and nations in Central America, South America and the Middle East, he explained.
“The Middle East [market] is experiencing strong growth, especially air exports because the Guadalajara airport is one of the most important for perishable freight . . .” Gómez said.
With regard to the U.S. market, the Apeajal chief said it was unlikely that the ratification of the new North America trade agreement, the USMCA, would open the border to Jalisco-grown avocados.
“. . . While the USMCA is a watershed for all industries and everything that has to do with exports . . . we don’t see that we will benefit at this time,” Gómez said.
The United States government said in 2016 that avocados grown in all Mexican states would be allowed into the U.S. but final approval never came although Jalisco producers believed that they had been given the green light for their “green gold.”
Five trucks carrying a shipment of 100 tonnes of Jalisco avocados were stopped at the Mexico-United States border and rejected by American authorities just days after U.S. President Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.
Michoacán, which produces the vast majority of Mexico’s avocados, remains the only state with authorization to export to the United States.
A new generation of community police on parade in Guerrero.
Criminal gangs are recruiting children because they can’t find hitmen known as sicarios, President López Obrador said on Thursday.
Speaking at his morning news conference, López Obrador said his assertion was based on information provided by members of his government’s security cabinet.
“. . . It’s becoming difficult for [criminal] organizations to get sicarios and [that’s why] they’re increasingly recruiting children,” he said, claiming that the government’s social programs are providing opportunities to young adults that lead them away from a life of crime.
In turn, criminal gangs are led to “desperation” and resort to recruiting children to fill their ranks, López Obrador said.
“It won’t be easy” for them to do that “because we’re not going to stop attending to children and young people – we’re dealing with the causes [of violence] . . . providing options to children, young people, moving them away from weapons and violence,” he said.
The president’s remarks came in response to a question about the recruitment of children as trainees for a vigilante security force in the mountains of Guerrero.
The coordinator of the regional community police force, CRAC-PF, said their training is necessary in the face of threats posed by Los Ardillos and other crime gangs.
“We teach them to defend themselves so that they’re not kidnapped. We have proof that if you carry a weapon, criminal groups don’t mess with you,” Bernardino Sánchez said.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo described the arming of minors as “regrettable,” adding that the government will carry out a review of self-defense forces in different parts of the country because many of them were not formed legitimately and are not operating that way either.
“It’s regrettable that irresponsible adults are arming young people who even in the best of cases don’t have any chance of properly defending themselves,” he said.
“Not all [community police forces] have a legitimate origin or a legitimate purpose. Accordingly, as a government we have the obligation to review the operation of these organizations . . .” Durazo added.
Indeed, some people say that the CRAC-PF has links to Los Ardillos’ bitter rival, Los Rojos.
Durazo stressed that public security is ultimately the responsibility of the Mexican state while conceding that additional forces are required in Guerrero.
However, the secretary said that the security situation has improved in the southern state, pointing out that homicide statistics show that it is no longer among the five most violent entities in the country.
The Valladolid museum dedicated to traditional dress.
Thanks to the efforts of an American woman with Mexican roots, the city of Valladolid, Yucatán, has a museum exclusively dedicated to the traditional clothing of the entire country, the Museo de Ropa Étnica de México (the Ethnic Clothing Museum of Mexico, or Murem).
The museum is the work of Tey Mariana Stiteler, who decided to retire in Mexico after a career at the Carnegie Museum of Art, and moved to Valladolid in 2009, wrote Necee Regis last week in The Washington Post.
Like so many foreigners living in Mexico, she was bitten by the handcrafts collecting bug, with a particular interest in traditional attire of all types. She began traveling all over Mexico to meet and talk to clothing makers.
Stiteler admits that when she started she bought items because she thought they were pretty. This changed on a trip to Chiapas where she bought some white-on-white embroidery and brocade weaving which is traditional in mountain villages. But she also noticed that it was not visible in all towns in the area. Here she realized that clothing preferences change, even in Mexico’s most traditional states, and concluded there was a need to preserve and document clothing styles.
The purpose of Stiteler’s museum is to highlight Mexico’s many cultures through their dress, along with preserving and documenting clothing styles in danger of being lost. Generally, creating a museum with its accompanying non-profit organization is a very slow process, but Stiteler managed to do it in six months, officially opening the doors in April of 2018.
On display are 90 complete outfits representing 25 ethnic groups from 16 states.
Creating a museum was not in her plans when she moved to Valladolid. “I was planning a one-time exhibition,” she said.
With such a large collection herself, someone commented that she should start a museum and she decided to take the plunge. The museum’s collection includes more than 90 complete outfits representing 25 ethnic groups from 16 states. It includes three types of garments: traditional (mestizo), indigenous and contemporary, organized by region. Only 65 are on view, along with individual hats, shoes, aprons and more.
When possible, similar garments from different time periods are displayed to show how elements remain or change over time such as neck openings, embroidery styles and the like. One change was the introduction of machine embroidery to the Yucatán peninsula. An antique foot-pedal Singer machine references its introduction to the area in the 1950s. Stiteler says that while most tourists are turned off by the idea of machine embroidery, well done pieces are truly works of art.
Even though there is still work to do with the collection, Murem has begun other activities. One is an educational program with public schools from preschool to secondary.
The documentation and promotion of the stories and culture behind the garments is seen as important. According to Stiteler, “It’s important to catalogue. I give it one or two generations until the daily use attached to traditions and rituals is gone. It will become a modernized version of something. The truth of it will be lost.”
Stiteler has supported the museum so far with her own funds, but the next goal is to become self-sustaining so government authorization to accept donations is expected soon. She does not want to take government money, but rather work with NGOs and other private entities.
In the next three years, Stiteler hopes to move the museum to a larger space. She says it needs at least four exhibition halls, along with storage areas and an office.
The epicenter of a 5.2-magnitude earthquake Friday morning in Oaxaca.
Officials in Oaxaca report there was no damage after a 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck near the coast early Friday morning.
The epicenter of the quake, recorded at 4:47am, was 22 kilometers northeast of Puerto Escondido and had a depth of 10 kilometers.
After activating the seismic alert system, the state Civil Protection office began its monitoring protocol to search for damages in all regions of the state, confirming at 6:00am that despite having been felt in several parts of Oaxaca, the quake did not cause any damage.
The Interior Secretariat declared a state of emergency in the towns of San Pedro Comitancillo and Ciudad Ixtepec, in Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, after a 5.3-magnitude tremor struck the region on January 16.
The quake damaged buildings in nine municipalities and caused nervous breakdowns among more than 400 people. Many residents are still haunted by the memory of the September 2017 quake that cause extensive damage in the area.
A natural disaster declaration issued by Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat is currently being reviewed in order to request funds from the Natural Disaster Fund (Fonden) to attend to damages in seven municipalities.
Oaxaca has seen the majority of the earthquakes registered in the country so far this year. Of the 2,752 quakes recorded as of January 24, the epicenters of 1,421 were in Oaxaca.
De la Parra will make her debut in Vienna on Monday.
Mexican conductor Alondra de la Parra will conduct the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in the prestigious Wiener Koncerthaus concert hall on January 27.
“It is an honor for me to be able to present for the first time in my career in Vienna, a city full of music and home of my most beloved composers. It fills me with excitement to work with the [Austrian Broadcasting Company] in a program that celebrates innovation as the unifying thread of the composers that comprise it,” she said.
The 39-year-old de la Parra, born in the United States but raised in Mexico, is one of eight official cultural ambassadors of Mexico and the country’s first woman to have conducted over 100 orchestras in 20 countries around the world.
She began studying piano in Mexico City at the age of 7 and developed an interest in conducting at the age of 13.
She is currently music director of the Queensland (Australia) Symphony Orchestra, a position she has held since 2015.
De la Parra’s concert in Austria will be her debut in Vienna, a city with a rich cultural history, especially with respect to classical music.
Her repertoire will include the contemporary compositions of Mexico’s Arturo Márquez as well as works by Brazilian Héctor Villa-Lobos, Ukrainian Sergei Prokofiev and Austrian Georg Friedrich Haas.
Celebrated percussionist Christoph Sietzen, currently featured as the concert hall’s “Great Talent,” will be among the performers that de la Parra will lead.
Founded in 1969, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSO Wien) is the orchestra of the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF) radio station and the only radio orchestra in the country.
Unlike the majority of other orchestras in Austria, the RSO Wien puts substantial focus on contemporary classical music. It is also committed to transmitting happiness through music, awakening interest in the classical genre and inspiring children and young people to play music.
The darker the color, the more corrupt the country.
Corruption is less of a problem in Mexico today than it was a year ago, according to the organization Transparency International.
Mexico rose eight places on the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2019 to rank 130th out of 180 countries, sharing its position with Guinea, Laos, the Maldives, Mali, Myanmar and Togo.
Mexico’s score on the CPI scale in which 100 is very clean and 0 is highly corrupt improved one point to 29 but is still well short of the global and Americas average, which was 43 in both cases.
Still, the higher ranking is welcome news after Mexico plummeted 33 places during the six-year term of former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
Eduardo Bohórquez, executive director of the Mexican chapter of Transparency International, said the change of government in December 2018, the creation of a legally autonomous federal Attorney General’s Office and the progress made in the implementation of the National Anti-Corruption System all contributed to Mexico’s improved score and resulting rise in the rankings.
However, the main factor was the anti-corruption work of the government’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UIF), he said.
Headed by Santiago Nieto, the UIF has taken a leading role in the fight against corruption initiated by the administration of President López Obrador, including investigations into high-profile figures of the former government such as ex-cabinet secretary Rosario Robles and former Pemex chief Emilio Lozoya.
Celebrating the improvement in the rankings on Thursday, Public Administration Secretary Irma Sandoval declared that the federal government is combating corruption in a “structural way.”
She said the scourge reached an “inflection point” in the first year of López Obrador’s rule and predicted that Mexico’s CPI ranking will continue to rise.
Sandoval noted that Transparency International only considered anti-corruption measures implemented by the government up until August and therefore didn’t take into account “public policies of great importance in our country such as the Republican Austerity Law that incorporates Transparency International recommendations.”
Later Thursday, Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo also made reference to Mexico’s improved standing.
“Today we recovered eight places and due to the great commitment of President López Obrador, we’re sure that we’ll continue to make progress . . . until we’ve regained a country and a government that has completely done away with corruption,” he said.
There is certainly a lot of room for improvement: Mexico was the lowest ranked among the 36 OECD countries and lagged 58 points behind Denmark and New Zealand, which both ranked first with 87 points. Finland ranked third followed by Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, which shared fourth place.
In the Americas, Mexico ranked below the majority of the 32 countries assessed including Canada (12th), Uruguay (21st), the United States (23rd), Chile (26th), Costa Rica (44th), Ecuador (93rd), Brazil (106th) and El Salvador (113th).
The lowest ranked country in the Americas was Venezuela (173rd), while Somalia ranked dead last ahead of South Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
A vehicle burns during Thursday's protest in Amozoc.
Angry residents of Amozoc, Puebla, clashed with security forces and burned vehicles Thursday in protest against insecurity and a shortage of basic services.
The conflict began when a group of citizens used semitrailers, tanker trucks and taxis to block the Puebla-Tehuacán highway to draw attention to their demand that Mayor Mario de la Rosa Romero be removed from office.
The blockade ended around 2:00pm thanks to dialogue between officials and the protesters, but at the same time another group of citizens attempted to storm the municipal palace.
Despite security forces using tear gas and firing their weapons into the air to disperse the angry crowd, people continued to demand the removal of de la Rosa and threw rocks at the National Guard and state police officers, forcing them to take cover in a nearby building.
They also burned a police patrol car and a government vehicle.
After a police officer told protesters that they had reached an agreement on the highway they refrained from further action while awaiting the arrival of a state official to continue talks.
No arrests were made nor did Mayor de la Rosa make an appearance.
The Lomas del Mirador housing project was abandoned 10 years ago.
A municipality in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara has signed an agreement with the federal government to salvage 68,000 abandoned homes.
Authorities in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, reached the deal with the National Workers Housing Fund (Infonavit) and the Secretariat of Urban Development and Urban Planning.
Authorities plan to sell the finished homes either to individual buyers or in bulk to companies that would then seek buyers for the properties.
Mayor Salvador Zamora told the newspaper Milenio that if all 68,000 homes are occupied, 100 million pesos (US$5.3 million) in property taxes will flow into the municipal coffers each year. The money would help pay for basic services that the city government provides to residential estates that lack water and other essentials.
The first stage of the rehabilitation project will focus on the incomplete Lomas del Mirador housing estate, which was abandoned more than a decade ago.
Milenio reported that authorities in Tlajomulco are also seeking an agreement with Infonavit in order to secure a loan to purchase 1,000 of the rehabilitated homes to be used as public housing.
The municipality has received 500 requests for such housing in recent months but the applicants remain on a waiting list because there are no properties available.
