16 tourism projects worth over US $3 billion under way in Riviera Nayarit

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December 23, 2019

The refurbished Riu hotel in Nuevo Vallarta.

Tourism investment continues to flow into the Riviera Nayarit, a region also known as Mexico’s Pacific Treasure.

Sixteen new hotels, resorts and residential projects are scheduled to be completed on the Nayarit coast between next year and 2025, while two projects were finished last month.

The 268-room Marival Armony resort opened in Punta Mita in November and the 678-room Riu Vallarta resort re-opened after an extensive refurbishment.

The former boasts about 300 meters of beachfront as well as five pools, a convention center, kids’ and teens’ clubs and a gymnasium, among other amenities.

Built in 2006, the Riu now features a new lobby, a revamped pool area and three new restaurants. Existing restaurants and guest rooms at the Nuevo Vallarta resort were given a makeover.

Five projects will conclude in each of 2020 and 2021, while a further seven are expected to be completed between 2022 and 2025.

Those set for completion next year are Aurberge’s 59-suite Susurros Del Corazón resort in Punta Mita; a 325-room Conrad by Hilton resort in Litibú; the 145-villa One & Only residential development in Mandarina; a 92-room resort by Barceló in Nuevo Vallarta; and the 50-room Four Seasons resort in Punta Mita, which is being renovated.

A total of 1,635 new rooms will open in 2021 at the Secrets Resort & Spa in Punta Mita, the Dreams Resort & Spa in the same location, the Ritz Carlton Reserve in Costa Canuva, the Iberostar Grand in Litibú and the Vidanta World Park in Nuevo Vallarta.

A 128-room Rosewood resort will follow in Mandarina in 2022, while a 400-room Westin hotel and a 240-room Ritz Carlton resort will open at Destiladeras beach in 2023. A 250-room Fairmont hotel will also open in Costa Canuva in 2023 and 600 rooms will be added to the Vidanta World Park.

In 2025, a 500-room JW Marriott resort and an Autograph Collection hotel are slated to begin operations at Destiladeras beach.

All told, investment in the projects is about US $3.3 billion, a figure which includes resources provided by the National Tourism Promotion Fund.

“Mexico’s Pacific Treasure is attracting more and more international hotel groups that contribute to its growth in terms of its tourism offerings; we’re glad that investors and developers have the confidence in us to bring in these new premium tourism projects,” said Jesús Carmona, president of the Banderas Bay Hotel and Motel Association and the Riviera Nayarit Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“The destination had a very successful 2019 and welcomed more than 2.7 million visitors; Mexico was the main country of origin, followed by the United States, Canada, England and South America,” he added.

“We see this tendency towards growth continuing into 2020. Several well-known hotel brands are ready to present their new properties in the destination, and others are scheduling openings within the next five years.”

Source: Periódico Express (sp), Vallarta Lifestyles (en) Travel Week (en)

4 new webcams installed at El Popo, Colima volcanoes

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Cody Copeland

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December 23, 2019

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All was quiet Monday morning at El Popo.

Four high-definition cameras have been installed to monitor the Popocatépetl and Colima volcanoes in conjunction with the website Webcams of México.

Located just 72 kilometers southeast of Mexico City, Popocatépetl resumed volcanic activity 25 years ago.

One HD camera was installed at the monitoring station in Tlamacas, México state, just five kilometers from the crater. The other was placed at San Juan Tianguismanalco, Puebla, 20 kilometers away.

Also called the Volcano of Fire, the Colima volcano is located on the border of that state with Jalisco. It is being monitored by a camera in Montitlán, 12 kilometers from the crater, and one in Palmillas, 19 kilometers away.

The images on the Cenapred website are updated every minute, but the cameras are streaming in real time at Webcams of México.

The Popocatépetl cameras can be viewed at Tlamacas and Tianguismanalco and those at the Colima volcano at Montitlán and Palmillas.

Although the alert level for Popocatépetl was raised to yellow Phase 3 in March, the volcano has calmed a bit and is now back down to yellow Phase 2.

The Colima volcano is also at a yellow alert.

The updated monitoring technology will allow authorities from all three levels of government and the Civil Protection force to better monitor the volcanoes and make more opportune decisions in the event of eruptions or other volcanic activity that threatens citizens.

Sources: Uno TV (sp), Milenio (sp)

Maya Train consultation ‘a sham,’ Zapatistas charge, vowing to fight project

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MND Staff

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December 23, 2019

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The vote was rejected during an assembly in Chiapas.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and two indigenous organizations have called the consultation process on the federal government’s Maya Train project “a sham” in a strongly-worded statement.

“The evil federal government pretended to consult the [indigenous] people” of the five southeastern states through which the railroad will run but is in fact “imposing” the “poorly-named” Maya Train project on them, said the EZLN, the National Indigenous Congress (CNI) and the Indigenous Government Council (CIG).

Issued at the conclusion of the fourth national assembly of the CNI and CGI in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, last week, the statement said the government’s objective is to “hand over indigenous territory to large industrial and touristic capital.”

The consultation – or “vulgar deceit” – overrides “our collective will, ignoring and offending our ways of organization and decision-making,” the groups said.

The month-long process, which concluded on December 15 with a vote that found 92.3% support for the 120-billion-peso (US $6.3-billion) rail project, was also denounced by the Mexico office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (ONU-DH, which said that it failed to meet all international human rights standards.

The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs said it would review the observations of the ONU-DH but noted that other United Nations agencies collaborated on the consultation process.

A federal lawmaker for the Democratic Revolution Party called the consultation a “farce,” asserting that it lacked legal legitimacy and had limited participation.

Claudia Reyes Montiel also said that President López Obrador had made his mind up about the project before the vote was held, recalling that during a visit to Campeche he declared that it would go ahead regardless of “rain, thunder or lightning.”

The EZLN, CNI and CIG also took aim at all of the government’s “mega-projects of death” (such as the Isthmus of Tehuantepec trade corridor), which seek to “reconfigure our country in order to leave it at the disposal of multinational capital.”

“. . . To advance in its war, the evil government is betting on dismantling the community fabric [by] encouraging internal conflicts,” the groups said, charging also that the government is selling off the livelihoods of future generations for the “million-dollar benefit of a few crooked people.”

“. . . We will resist and fight because we are alive . . . even though we are afraid of ceasing to exist as we are now . . .”

The Zapatistas, best known for their uprising in Chiapas in January 1994, have had a testy relationship with López Obrador over the years and made it clear from the start of his presidency that they would oppose his “destructive projects.”

Source: El Universal (sp), El Sol de México (sp)

Dance company sees renewed interest in Mexican culture

By

Leigh Thelmadatter

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December 23, 2019

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The Folk Ballet is performing this week at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City.

A folk ballet company has observed increased interest in Mexican culture at the international level and intends to take advantage of that with tours in the United States and South America.

In addition to regular performances at the Palace of Fine Arts and major festivals in Mexico, the Amalia Hernández Folk Ballet plans a five-month tour in the United States, another in South America and collaborations with Mariachi Vargas of Tecalitlán, Jalisco, one of Mexico’s oldest mariachi groups, and the National Symphonic Orchestra.

Says director Salvador López López, grandson of founder and namesake Amalia Hernández, “We will have a good season, generating new audiences, new ideas. We are taking advantage of the interest in Mexican culture and we are going to do our part with folk dance, which has a force and essence that is indispensable to the cultural life of the country.”

The 2020 season will begin after the last scheduled presentation for 2019, Navidades de México (Christmases of Mexico), scheduled for December 25 to January 5 at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City. This is an annual tradition which was began by Hernández herself, focusing on the country’s different Christmas traditions.

It features a “living nativity scene,” the arrival of the Three Wise Men (who traditionally bring gifts to children on January 6) and posadas. It includes traditional dance from Oaxaca, Yucatán, Chihuahua and Tamaulipas and new choreographies based on dances from Tlaxcala, Michoacán and Veracruz.

The ballet troupe plans two international tours next year.

The Mexican Folk Ballet was founded by dancer, teacher and choreographer Amalia Hernández in 1952, starting off as a workshop in modern ballet with eight dancers. It initially did only sporadic performances, but the success of a show about music of Michoacán prompted the group to research and perform Mexico’s many traditional folk dances. Soon the troupe was performing a weekly show on television, which got the attention of the Secretariat of Tourism. It began to send the dancers to countries such as Cuba, Canada and the United States.

The ballet group also sponsored a School of Folk Ballet founded in 1968. Its focus is on Mexican folk dance, but also teaches supporting techniques in classical ballet, ballroom dance and Afro-Cuban dance. Promising students are recruited to study at the school and then given a chance to audition for the dance company.

Source: Diario de Xalapa (sp)

Mexico City cops’ Christmas gift is a 9% salary hike

By

Cody Copeland

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December 23, 2019

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Officer Razo with his distinguished service award.

The Mexico City government has announced a Christmas gift for the capital’s police force — a 9% pay increase in the coming year.

In a ceremony at the Police University on the weekend, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum announced the raise and presented special Christmas bonuses to officers who have shown outstanding service.

“We’re doing everything we can within the limits of the budget in order to create better working conditions for you. For too long the city’s police have been abandoned,” she said.

Sheinbaum gave the award for Distinguished Police Officer of the Year to officer Roberto Gregorio Razo Palacios, 47, who rescued a woman who had been kidnapped. The award comes with 500,000 pesos (US $26,400) in cash.

Three officers received officer of the month awards of 50,000 pesos (US $2,640).

The president of the Citizens’ Council for Security and Justice, Salvador Guerrero Chirprés, congratulated the officers and said it was the first time that an annual award has been presented.

“You have all collaborated in order to arrest 11,627 people this year,” he said.

Police Chief Omar García Harfuch paid respects to the seven police officers who died in the line of duty during the current administration and promoted 1,000 officers.

Mayor Sheinbaum closed the ceremony by summarizing the security strategy for 2020, which will focus on the causes that drive young people to commit crime.

Source: El Sol de México (sp)

Fire damages 188 stands at Mexico City’s San Cosme market

By

Cody Copeland

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December 23, 2019

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Sunday morning's fire at the San Cosme market. — Sunday morning's fire at the market in Cuauhtémoc.

A fire on Sunday in Mexico City’s San Cosme market left 188 stands damaged and the entire market closed for the holiday season.

The cause of the fire, which started around 5:30am, is unknown, but a short circuit is believed to have been the culprit.

Firefighters from five different boroughs were able to put the fire out by 8:00am, but not before it had burned 1,000 square meters of the market.

Over 150 residents in neighboring houses and apartments were forced to evacuate their homes while police set up a safety perimeter around a gas station adjacent to the market.

No deaths or injuries have been reported, but the vendors now find themselves in a difficult situation during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year.

To offset the hardship, Economic Development Secretary Fadlala Akabani Hneide requested that the Labor Secretariat provide the vendors with unemployment benefits and relocate them to the street to the west of the market to mitigate the loss of December sales.

Monthly unemployment benefits of 2,500 pesos (US $132) will be disbursed to all 252 of the market vendors for six months.

The Cuauhtémoc borough, in which the market is located, will provide tarps for the temporary street stalls and will have discussions with neighboring residents to request that they support the provisional solution.

Sources: El Financiero (sp), El Universal (sp)

Private rehab centers are necessary but some engage in abuse of their own

By

MND Staff

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December 23, 2019

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Private rehab centers are integral to providing treatment. — Private centers are integral to providing treatment.

“Many people are killed inside, others are hurt, mutilated, burned. I know of someone who was buried alive and then dug up as punishment for not following the rules.”

Those are the words of Arturo Ortiz Castro, a substance abuse prevention specialist at the National Institute of Psychiatry.

He’s not talking about Mexico’s toughest jails but rather private drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers that operate without certification and oversight from the National Commission Against Additions (Conadic), a dependency of the federal Secretariat of Health.

“Horrible things” happen to people in private rehab centers, some of whom are admitted against their will, Ortiz told the newspaper El Universal.

“. . . The most significant harm” to the health of people in poorly-run centers, although the least obvious, Ortiz added, comes from emotional abuse.

“There are thousands of [psychological] effects and many of them are not erased for the rest of their lives,” Ortiz said.

Among them, he explained, are depression, loss of self-confidence and the ability to trust others, and memory damage. Ortiz said that anyone looking for a rehab center needs to ask whether it is registered and certified by authorities.

“If they tell you that it is, go ahead. If they tell that it isn’t or that they’re in the process [of registering and certifying the center], forget it,” he said.

The probability that any particular drug and alcohol rehab center is operating without certification is high.

Of approximately 2,300 facilities across the country, just 500 are certified by Conadic, said commission chief Gady Zabicky Sirot.

There are three types of rehab centers in Mexico, he said: clandestine centers that operate “without any kind of control,” centers that are registered with authorities but not certified, and Conadic-certified centers.

Zabicky said that the majority, whether they are certified or not, treat their patients humanely.

However, he acknowledged that he couldn’t rule out the existence of centers that violate the human rights of patients, hold them against their will and provide inadequate or virtually non-existent medical treatment.

Zabicky called on the directors of uncertified rehab centers to approach Conadic to commence the certification process, explaining that would help authorities to weed out those that mistreat their patients.

He said Conadic has no intention to work with the health regulatory agency Cofepris to shut down all private rehab centers that are not registered and/or certified because those that do have their paperwork in order (including government-run facilities) would be unable to meet the demand for addiction treatment services on their own.

“The last thing we want to do . . . is to close these centers because they do . . . meet a very significant part of the population’s needs,” Zabicky said.

“If we said tomorrow that all the centers that aren’t registered will be closed – which in any case we believe is legally very difficult to do – we would have a serious problem with the thousands of people who are receiving treatment [in them] because they would have nowhere [to go] . . .”

Source: El Universal (sp)

Why are my tweezers Italian? Why not Mexican?

By

Carlisle Johnson

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December 23, 2019

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christmas ornaments — These ornaments were an opportunity.

A few years ago I bought some tweezers at a chain pharmacy. Idly, I read the packaging and was surprised to note that they were made in Italy.

Since then, but not so idly, I’ve made an effort to note the country of manufacture of many of my purchases. The effort was not a negative one to avoid any specific country, but a positive one to ask, “Why couldn’t this be made in Mexico, or even Guatemala, where I live?”

The question is asked in the context of the urgent acclaimed need for job creation in those two countries that are the source of the bulk of would-be or actual irregular migrants to the United States.

A 2016 Bloomberg inside view of an Apple manufacturing facility in China stated that factory workers at that time averaged between $650 and $850 a month in “take-home pay.” At $750 a month, this would equal almost 150 times Mexico’s less than $5 a day minimum wage, and over twice the monthly salary of a teacher or police officer in Guatemala.

Although comparisons are difficult between countries, especially those with not easily comparable labor benefits and fluctuating exchange rates, it’s probable that the lines would extend around the proverbial block if a business were hiring at $750 a month in either Mexico or Guatemala, as examples.

So why aren’t my tweezers made in Mexico or Guatemala? And my cell phone? And my plumbing fixtures, etc. etc.etc.?

My answer is that they could be.

I recently overnighted in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violence-plagued states, dangerous enough to be absolutely off limits for personnel from many countries’ embassies.

While economists in ivory towers equivocated and politicians pondered how much money to allocate to addressing the migration issue, the inhabitants of a tiny tongue-twisting town in central Mexico have achieved unprecedented prosperity, put a brake on emigration, and set an example for the whole nation to emulate.

In 1937 a massive landslide buried key parts of Tlalpujahua, Michoacan’s principal gold mine, Mexico’s crusading and expropriating president Lázaro Cárdenas wielded his pen and made sure the mine would never reopen, and the outlook was bleak.

It’s 2019: the town of fewer than 5,000 is now the fifth largest producer in the world of its niche product, has prospered through exports from a weak peso, armored itself against future domestic downturns by emphasizing foreign sales and has successfully fought off an invasion of its home and foreign markets by inexpensive Chinese imitations.

It has achieved all of this while located in Michoacán, Mexico’s most notoriously cartel-dominated state.

The product is the prosaic Christmas tree ornament.

This op-ed is not about ornaments, but recognizing opportunity and acting on it.

Feliz Navidad.

The writer is a Guatemala-based journalist.

Ambassador accused of shoplifting resigns for health reasons

By

Cody Copeland

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December 23, 2019

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Mexico’s ambassador to Argentina resigned from his post on Sunday citing health concerns.

Óscar Ricardo Valero Recio Becerra was ordered to return to Mexico earlier this month by Foreign Affairs Secretary Marcelo Ebrard after being caught attempting to shoplift a book from a bookstore in Buenos Aires.

Ebrard confirmed that he accepted Valero’s resignation and said the diplomat is currently undergoing neurological treatment for effects associated with the removal of a brain tumor in 2012.

Valero’s neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Ana Luis Sosa, said that although the tumor was removed, the loss of neural tissue and neurodegeneration associated with age have damaged cerebral tissue in the frontal lobe.

The damage has caused Valero to present atypical behavior such as kleptomania, the recurrent urge to steal without the motives of need or profit.

Valero’s monthly salary as ambassador was 234,000 pesos (US $12,160). The book he attempted to steal cost the equivalent of US $10.

The 76-year-old had showed other behavioral issues such as committing traffic infractions, managing his time poorly and having problems in his personal relationships.

During a long diplomatic career that began in 1970, Valero served as the ambassador to Chile from 2001 to 2004 and has taught political science and international relations at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and other higher learning institutions.

Source: Milenio (sp)

In Mexico, April Fool’s Day falls in December and celebrates ‘the innocents’

By

Leigh Thelmadatter

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December 23, 2019

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A day for playing tricks evolved from this biblical tale.

There’s no need to wait until April to play a trick on someone: Mexico’s equivalent of April Fool’s Day is December 28.

Día de los Santos Inocentes (Day of the Holy Innocents) is a day for all kinds of practical jokes but beware of lending money. According to tradition, there is no obligation to pay back anything borrowed on this day.

The tradition is based on a tragic biblical story. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, when King Herod was warned of the birth of the new king, the baby Jesus, he sent soldiers to kill all boys under the age of 2 to maintain a hold on his kingdom. The children killed on this day are known as the “Holy Innocents.” Jesus escaped the slaughter because his parents were warned by an angel and fled.

The date is set on December 28 in part because it is a few days after the celebration of Jesus’s birth.

But the concept of “a trick” comes into play because King Herod was fooled into believing that he had eliminated the threat, which he had not.

The concept of behaving in a naughty manner dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe, when there was a “festival of the crazies” between December 24 and 31. A blind eye was turned to many kinds of excess but the festival got out of hand in Spain, forcing King Phillip II to ban it. The celebration became a day associated with playing tricks and the practice of borrowing something to be returned on Candlemas, February 2.

Like other Spanish Catholic observances, this made its way to Mexico and has evolved in its own way. There is a phrase recited to those who have been fooled is “Inocente palomita que te dejaste engañar en este Día de los Inocentes, que en nadie debes confiar.” (Innocent dove, you let yourself be fooled on this Day of the Innocents, when nobody should be trusted.)

Source: El Sol de México (sp), La Razón (sp)