At Dolphin Beach, it’s just pristine sands, lush jungle, racoons and you

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April 30, 2021

Dolphin Beach as it looked in February of 2021. A rough track connects it to the coastal highway.

Who hasn’t dreamed of stumbling upon a totally deserted, clean sandy beach? To make the dream more appealing, let’s add a bit of exotic jungle just above the sand, and — hidden in that jungle — a flat, shady, grassy spot to pitch a tent, with plenty of firewood lying all about.

Now, let’s include a rough road connecting this hidden paradise to the nearest highway.

“Enough!” you protest,” such beaches are only found in the movies!”

Cave explorers in Mexico, however, frequently end up in remote places where they often encounter the unexpected — which, on one occasion actually included just such a dream beach.

This means of course, that our story begins with a cave …

Frolicking dolphins are often seen from Platanitos Beach and points to the north and south.

Many years ago, I was chatting with a shopkeeper in downtown Guadalajara. And when I mentioned my interest in exploring cuevas, his eyes widened. “I’m from Nayarit,” he told me, “and I remember a big cave in El Cerro del Toro, between Ixtapa and the beach at Platanitos.”

Naturally, we had to go take a look, enticed by the prospect of exploring a cave and then relaxing at a beach.

So, a few weeks later, We found ourselves in Nayarit. While driving through the town of Zacualpan, we happened to mention La Cueva del Toro to a lugareño (local) who immediately replied, “Oh, you mean La Cueva de La Tigra. Actually, it’s right here on the edge of town, but let me warn you: you need a rope to get into it. There’s a 20-meter drop right at the entrance, and then there are passages that go on forever. I swear you could walk all day and never reach the end of that cave!”

Well, we had come prepared for every sort of cave imaginable, and our informant patiently waited while we donned helmets, harnesses, ascenders and rappelling devices and pulled out bags full of rope.

Staggering under our loads, we proceeded along a faint, dusty trail under the blazing midday sun of this semitropical area. Our non-caving friends followed along, scratching their heads over our insistence on submitting ourselves (and them) to such torture instead of heading directly for the beach.

Of the various pieces of information our informant had given us about the cave, only one (its name) turned out factual. The “20-meter drop” was an easy-to-downclimb two-meter slope, and the “endless passages” added up to about 120 meters of beastly hot cave. The only movement of air inside there was caused by bat wings. Several holes in the floor indicated past efforts at guano mining. Drenched with sweat, we made a quick sketch of the cave and exited into the sizzling sunshine.

Camping on Platanitos (Little Bananas) Beach in Nayarit.

The next town we came to was Ixtapa. We found our way into it with ease, but getting back out of it and onto the road to Platanitos turned out to be a problem.

“Take that street,” offered a caballero sporting a thick black mustache.

We did so and found ourselves looking over the edge of a near precipice. Far below us, we could see nothing but a wide, rocky river. We backtracked and tried another informant.

“Bueno, you could try the next street over there.”

So we tried the next street and again ended up at the edge of the very same precipice.

“Where’s the road?” we asked yet another Ixtapian.

“This is it!” cries Nicole Wolf. “Dolphin Beach really exists!”

“That’s it down there,” answered our new informant, “Can’t you see it?” And the truth finally dawned upon us: the river was the road!

Clenching our teeth, we plummeted down the steep incline and somehow reached the bottom in one piece. Then we drove straight into the river — cautiously! From midstream, we could see in the distance the skeleton of a steel bridge under construction that promised a less daunting passage through Ixtapa in the future.

Platanitos, which means “little bananas,” turned out to be a delightful beach on a small bay, with a great view and several unpretentious, thatched-roof restaurants. After an inexpensive dinner of the freshest fish imaginable, we ambled north along the shore over a great heap of black volcanic rocks to walk off our delicious dinner.

To our astonishment, we soon came to a hidden beach: a nice stretch of lovely sand with not a soul to be seen anywhere. The only footprints we found were those of a raccoon.

Needless to say, we were nearly struck speechless when we discovered that this idyllic beach had a convenient camping area just above it, with a rough track offering access to the highway through an impressive stretch of lush jungle.

On top of that, just offshore, we could see dolphins leaping and frolicking in the sparkling water!

A toxic pufferfish lying on the beach. Its open mouth shows the plates that substitute for teeth. Steemit

A few hours later, we had installed ourselves on our own private beach. All around our campsite there were cohune palms, the ones they use for making thatched roofs. In their shade, we hung our hammocks, watching for dolphins while swaying in the breeze and sipping ice-cold Negra Modelo.

Almost every morning, a boatful of fishermen would appear offshore, methodically lowering a long net. Their catch was never very large, and by the time they had thrown out the occasional stingrays and pufferfish, only a few buckets of edible fish remained. Some of these they were happy to sell to us less-successful fishermen. For a handful of pesos we bought enough to thoroughly satisfy all of us lazy cavers.

One morning, as we strolled past one of the pufferfish the pescadores (fishermen) had thrown out, our naturalist friend Chuy casually remarked, “These pufferfish, by the way, are quite curious: they have no teeth.”

“Oh really?” said my wife Susy, sticking her finger into a puffer’s open mouth.

Snap!

As Susy held up a now bleeding finger, Chuy continued his discourse.

“The surf is great!” says Josh Wolf while testing the waters at Dolphin Beach.

“… instead they have a kind of plate that serves the same purpose.”

And the Cueva del Toro?

The truth is that Dolphin Beach turned out to be so delightful and enticing that not a one of us could ever get out of our hammocks to go look for it!

A few weeks ago, I happened to be back in Nayarit, in the vicinity of Platanitos. When I told my compañeros about Dolphin Beach, they immediately insisted we go take a look at it.

“Amigos,” I replied,” I was last there over 30 years ago. It’s probably paved with asphalt and overrun with buildings by now.”

“Well, let’s check it out anyhow,” my friends insisted.

Dolphin Beach: “No one but you, me and the dolphins.”

Because the tide was too high to follow the beach, we hiked north from Platanitos along the coastal highway — in the hot sun — until we came to that old, hard-to-spot, rough track that led us down, through the jungle, to beautiful, peaceful, Dolphin Beach, which, to my amazement, looked exactly as I remembered it.

In fact, the tracks we found on its pristine sands bore witness to no other visitor than that same raccoon of yesteryear — well, more likely its great-grandchild.

Want to see for yourself? First swear to leave the place just as you found it and then ask Google Maps to take you to “9Q57+23 Otates y Cantarranas, Nayarit,” where you’ll find the rough track that takes you down to the beach. And when you get there, remember to keep an eye out for the dolphins!

Dolphin Beach is one of 65 natural sites described in volumes I and II of Outdoors in Western Mexico by John and Susy Pint.

Canceled Mexico City airport wins international architectural award

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MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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Image from the designs for the cancelled Mexico City airport in Texcoco. — A photo of the airport while it was under construction. FR-EE and Foster + Partners

It was canceled in 2018 but that didn’t stop the previous government’s Mexico City airport project from winning a 2021 international architecture award.

The project, which was canceled by President López Obrador after a legally questionable public consultation, won the first prize in the transportation (concept) category of the Rethinking the Future Awards 2021, an annual awards program now in its ninth year.

Announcing the scrapped airport’s victory, Rethinking the Future, an architecture website that organizes the awards, said architects Fernando Romero and Norman Forster had sought to “revolutionize airport design and the experience of traveling.”

“… The intense colors, characteristic of Mexican culture, bleed into the functional components of the intelligent membrane skin/building facade. The Mesoamerican symbol of the sun is evoked within the central luminous vaulted hall,” the website said, referring to a terminal that was never built.

“From the initial view from the sky and the car to the awe-inspiring moment of making it inside, the architecture binds body and spirit, Mexico City and travel, technology and history, into a unified lightweight structure that evokes the excitement of traveling.”

Apparently oblivious to the project’s cancellation, Rethinking the Future said the airport, which was being built on an ancient lakebed in Texcoco, México state, was “a necessary and important investment for the country’s future” and represented a “coming together of global design talent and local innovation [that] will allow for great spans and soaring heights, at one-third of the mass and three times the span of a typical airport.”

The apparent positive attributes of the airport design failed to impress López Obrador who, before coming to office in late 2018, argued that the project was a boondoggle – corrupt, too expensive and being built on land that is sinking.

He revisited his decision to cancel the US $15-billion project on Friday, asserting that it was a wise one.

“The best public business we’ve done has been not to build the Texcoco airport, estimated at 300 billion pesos,” López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference.

He said the cancellation will cost 100 billion pesos and that building his government’s Mexico City airport at the Santa Lucía Air Force base north of the capital will cost 75 billion pesos.

Therefore, the decision to cancel the Texcoco project generated savings of 125 billion pesos (US $6.2 billion), López Obrador said. The abandoned airport site is to be converted into a massive ecological park at an estimated cost of almost 18 billion pesos.

The president said the 125-billion-peso saving is almost equivalent to the cost of the US $8-billion Maya Train, a railroad that will run through five states in southeastern Mexico.

Canceling the project, a move opposed by the president’s former chief of staff Alfonso Romo and ex-finance minister Carlos Urzúa, was the “best public business” decision the government ever made, López Obrador reiterated.

Source: Reforma (sp)

Every day, 3 children die in traffic accidents; over 11,000 died between 2010 and 2019

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MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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Child vendor in Guadalajara. A UNICEF report cited the city, as well as Zapopan, Jalisco and Mexico City, as particularly unsafe zones for minor pedestrians.

An average of three children were killed in traffic accidents every day in the 10-year period between 2010 and 2019, according to the national statistics agency, Inegi.

Official data shows that 11,155 children aged 14 and under were killed during the period, making traffic accidents the leading cause of death among minors, ahead of choking incidents and drownings.

One-third of the children who died in vehicle accidents — 3,703 — were run over, while the remainder were passengers in cars, buses and trucks that crashed or were involved in motorcycle accidents. Of those hit by cars, 1,740, or 47% of the total, were aged 4 or younger; 27% were aged 5–9 and 26% were 10–14.

Walking to and from school poses a risk to children in Mexico, especially to those who live in urban areas with a lot of traffic.

According to a 2018 report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 60% of children in Mexico City walk to school, the majority of whom belong to low-income families.

“The link between child poverty and road traffic injury is seen clearly in Mexico’s urban centers, where child pedestrians are most vulnerable,” the report said. UNICEF claimed that the “policy response” to the dangers children face has been “lacking.”

The report mentioned Mexico City as well as Guadalajara, and Zapopan in Jalisco as particularly dangerous urban zones for child pedestrians. In Guadalajara and Zapopan between 2008 and 2010, it said, 71% of the children 17 and under who died in traffic accidents were pedestrians.

Most children who died in crashes between 2010 and 2019 were passengers in cars, but 426 were killed in motorcycle accidents. Jalisco recorded the highest number of motorcycle accident fatalities among children, followed by Tabasco, Veracruz and Chiapas.

In its report, Streets for Life: Safe and healthy journeys for the children of Latin America and the Caribbean, UNICEF noted that younger children on motorcycles rarely use authorized helmets, in part because there are no authorized helmets for children under 3 years old, but also because they are not regulated or enforced.

Just over 39% of the children killed in traffic accidents during the decade, or 4,380, were aged 4 or younger. About 7%, or 765, had not yet turned a year old. Among children aged 5–9, there were 2,867 deaths, or 26% of the total. Among those aged 10–14, there were 3,908 fatalities, or 35% of the total.

One possible reason why there were more fatalities among those aged 0–4 is that many of the youngsters who died were likely not seated in appropriate infant car seats.

Inegi data shows that México state — the country’s most populous — recorded the highest number of deaths of children in traffic accidents with a total of 1,039. Jalisco was second with 1,010 fatalities, followed by Guanajuato (775), Puebla (620), Chihuahua (569) and Sinaloa (511). More than 40% of all the deaths occurred in those six states.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Bright star of Tonalá’s famed burnished pottery artisans began as an outlier

By

Leigh Thelmadatter

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April 30, 2021

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José Luis Cortéz with an example of his pottery. Marianne Carlson Feria Maestros de Arte

José Luis Cortéz Hernández is one of the most prolific of Jalisco’s famous burnished potters of Tonalá. With a career of over three decades, he is an acknowledged master in his field.

That’s quite an accomplishment for an “outsider.” Tonalá burnished pottery has centuries of history; its secrets are jealously guarded by families with generations of experience.

The pottery is distinguished by the fact that, instead of being glazed, it is rubbed with a stone before firing to give it shine. More obvious are the traditional decorative motifs with highly stylized images of animals, plants and fantastical creatures called naguals.

But Cortéz is not from a family of potters. He was born to farmers in the village of San José de Gracia in the Los Altos region of the state. It is a whole other world, and burnished pottery is unknown there.

Looking for a better life, the family moved to Guadalajara when he was only six months old. He began working as a teen, eventually with a full-time job at a plastics factory in Tonalá.

His life changed when he needed to get a commemorative plate made for a couple celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. He went to the workshop of Salvador Vázquez Carmona, a renowned artisan who not only was from a pottery family but also studied under maestro Jorge Wilmot, who established high-fire ceramics in Guadalajara.

When Cortéz arrived, the maestro was painting fine lines on a large platter.

“It was the moment when I got hooked because I was fascinated by the emerging image of a bird coming from the hands of the artisan,” he says.

Cortéz ordered the plate, picked it up and gave it to the couple, but he did not stop there. He returned again to the workshop to see if he could work there as an apprentice.

It was a brave thing to ask since Tonalá family workshops almost never take on outsiders; they prefer to keep their techniques a secret. Fortunately, Vázquez was more open-minded.

He told the young man that he could work for him, but Vázquez did not expect him to stay. It is hard work, and many who try don’t last a week. But Cortéz is made of sterner stuff and worked with the maestro for eight years.

Despite all that time, Cortéz says he really learned “only the basics” of molding and decorating. His road to becoming a master artisan would come through trial and error.

“I always focus on my kinds of pieces, wanting to make the next better than the last.” he says.

The basis of Cortéz’s work is traditional, especially the iconography that appears on his pieces — flowers, birds, other animals — because he believes it is important to preserve tradition; but he does add his own touches.

Cortéz’s work stands out because of the subtle changes he makes in both form and painting. He specializes in giant jars called tibores, platters, covered urns and other containers, the mainstays of Tonalá pottery.

Soon after leaving Vázquez’s workshop, Cortéz created his first innovation, squarish boxes, or “urns,” created by making the sides separately like tiles, then joining them together.

Another important innovation is the addition of traditional decorative elements in relief, created by making creatures like birds, fish and naguals in clay and attaching them to the main body of the piece. He likes the textural dimension that the relief gives.

Cortéz, right, winning the National Ceramic Prize of Tlaquepaque in Jalisco in 2013, handed to him by former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, center. Marianne Carlson, Feria Maestros del Arte

His work has been regularly available in fine outlets in Guadalajara and other parts of Mexico and has been exhibited in the United States, France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Japan and India. He has also had a longstanding relationship with the Feria Maestros del Arte, one of the most important folk art events in Mexico.

The connection with the Feria began about 14 years ago when a buyer offered to introduce him to the fair’s founder, Marianne Carlson. After seeing his work, she immediately offered him the chance to sell, and he has been a regular at the event ever since.

Carlson says that Cortéz “…has risen to become a true master of bruñido [burnished] pottery. His work won the National Ceramic Prize of Tlaquepaque in 2013.

Feria Maestros del Arte predicts a bright future for this creative artist whose face comes alive as he speaks of his craft. However, the maestro says that it is more satisfying to have people come into the workshop and appreciate the work that he does. Before the pandemic, he regularly had visitors from tours set up by local hotels, with some people staying for hours as they watched him work and explain his process.

The pandemic has prompted him to up his game online. He had a Facebook page but has recently launched a more thorough website. You can also order his work from the Feria’s web page.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.

Businessman arrested for theft of 5bn pesos from housing fund

By

MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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An Infonavit housing development. — Formally employed workers registered with the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) can receive assistance from the housing institute Infonavit to buy or build small, affordable homes. (Casas Infonavit)

A businessman accused of looting 5 billion pesos from the national housing fund has been arrested in Xochitepec, Morelos.

Teófilo Zaga Tawil was apprehended Friday morning for organized crime and money laundering relating to contracts between his company and the National Workers Housing Fund (Infonavit), a state run fund which helps people gain access to mortgages.

The public prosecutor’s office believes that the contracts and payouts between his company, Telra Realty, and Infonavit were illicit because they were awarded without any bidding process, and the company did not not have the capital, professional experience or infrastructure to carry out the work.

It also says Infonavit officials simulated the mediation process.

Early termination of contracts forced Infonavit to pay 5.88 billion pesos to Telra in compensation in 2017.

His brother, Rafael Zaga Tawil, and nephew, Elías Zaga Hanono, are also being sought.

Sources: Milenio (sp), Reforma (sp)

Business groups, landowners fight protected area designation in Bacalar

By

MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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The Bacalar lagoon area of Quintana Roo. UNAM

Several business groups and local landowners have warned that they won’t allow the creation of a natural protected area (ANP) in the Bacalar lagoon area of Quintana Roo.

Groups that include the Bacalar chapter of the Mexican Employers Federation and the southern Quintana Roo branch of the Business Coordinating Council (CCE) as well as owners of land in the municipalities of Bacalar and Othón P. Blanco held a press conference this week to express their opposition to the designation.

They argued that there are already legal instruments to regulate “sustainable rustic growth” in the Bacalar lagoon region, an area popular with tourists located about 40 kilometers northwest of Chetumal.

The press conference came after the Quintana Roo ministries of Tourism and the Environment made the decision to fund a tourism management program for the Bacalar lagoon area, a move seen as a step toward an ANP designation, which would severely limit or prohibit further development.

The business groups and landowners claimed that the Amigos de Sian Ka’an, an environmental, conservation and sustainable development NGO, and other environmental groups have “bought” scientific opinions to support the creation of a new ANP.

Eloy Quintal Jiménez, the local president of the CCE, said the environmental organizations that are pushing for the designation on the grounds that there are high levels of pollution due to tourism did the same thing in 2017 because “they want to control the lagoon and generate economic resources for their own benefit.”

“The most offensive thing is that these people, outsiders mainly, are seeking to shut down investment opportunities and sources of employment, as has happened in Chilaquilá, Holbox, Xcalak and Felipe Carrillo Puerto,” he said, referring to other destinations in Quintana Roo.

Quintal also said the lagoon is recovering from recent pollution — which some people say was caused by runoff of rain rather than tourism — “in contrast to the forecast of those who promote the creation of an ANP.”

The business groups — among which are also the Bacalar Hotel Association, the Quintana Roo branch of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry and the Chetumal-Tulum chapter of the Mexican Chamber of Commerce — and the landowners said they are committed to sustainable development but not in a way that benefits just a few people.

They argued that there are already environmental regulations to guide sustainable development and therefore an ANP designation is not needed.

They also called on mayoral candidates in Bacalar and Othón P. Blanco — adjoining municipalities across which the lagoon area is located — to commit to a comprehensive environmental and land-use agenda that protects the lagoon but allows the surrounding forested area to be used in a sustainable way.

Quintal noted that the state government reached an agreement with landowners and business groups in 2017 that there would be no ANP in the area.

Despite that, the government — led by Governor Carlos Joaquín since 2016 — has funded the tourism management project that could lead to an ANP, he said before reiterating that the business groups and landowners won’t allow it to happen.

Source: Noticaribe (sp), El Economista (sp)

4,000 Haitian migrants estimated to have arrived in Chiapas this week

By

MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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Thousands of Haitian migrants are stranded in Tapachula, Chiapas, after large numbers of people from the Caribbean country crossed into Mexico via the southern border with Guatemala this week.

The newspaper Milenio reported that there has been a massive influx of Haitians in recent days and that some are sleeping on the streets of Tapachula because migrant shelters are full.

Since Monday, numerous groups of up to 60 Haitians have reached the southern border town of Ciudad Hidalgo after crossing the Suchiate River on rafts from Tecún Umán in Guatemala.

Taking advantage of the Haitians’ lack of Spanish language skills and their fear of being detained by authorities or attacked by criminals, raftsmen have charged the migrants five times the normal price — 100 pesos per person instead of 20 pesos — for transport across the river, Milenio said.

The migrants travel the approximately 40 kilometers from Ciudad Hidalgo to Tapachula on public transit. In Tapachula, the Haitians are applying for humanitarian visas at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) with the hope that they will be able to stay in Mexico legally and access economic help from UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

This latest wave of migrants is new, but the problem isn't: Haitian migrants in 2016 crossing the Suchiate River from Guatemala into Chiapas. — This latest wave of migrants is new, but the problem isn’t: Haitian migrants in 2016 crossing the Suchiate River from Guatemala into Chiapas.

Milenio said approximately 1,000 Haitians arrived at Comar offices in Tapachula every day between Monday and Thursday and estimated that some 4,000 migrants from Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, have crossed into the country this week via the southern border — which is ostensibly closed to nonessential traffic.

Among the migrants are many young men but also women and children, all of whom are exhausted when they reach Tapachula after long journeys from Central America, where they arrived on flights from Haiti. While they wait for their refugee applications to be processed, they are effectively stranded in Tapachula, which is straining under the pressure of the influx.

According to the president of an association that provides assistance to migrants, more than 11,000 — many of whom are Haitians and nationals of African countries — have been stranded in Tapachula since August last year.

“They’re waiting to be given asylum or refuge. They’re looking to stay in Mexico, but there is a delay in giving them a response and it’s causing a humanitarian crisis in Tapachula,” Jesús Cruz Buenrostro said.

More than 17,400 migrants were registered by Mexican immigration authorities in March, a monthly record. More than 3,100 accompanied minors were also registered by the National Immigration Institute (INM), which last week pledged to establish 17 additional shelters on the southern border in Campeche and Chiapas to provide temporary housing to migrants, including thousands of children.

The need for more shelters in Tapachula is clear. After arriving in the city, migrants from Haiti, Central American nations and other countries trudge through the downtown streets looking for cheap or free accommodation, but not all of them are successful.

The local newspaper El Orbe reported that shelters in Tapachula are full and that some 2,000 migrants are sleeping on park benches, city sidewalks or “wherever the night takes them.”

One rough-sleeping migrant who spoke with the newspaper said the INM is treating foreigners poorly and denigrating them for the situation they find themselves in. He said he had been sleeping on a bench near a shelter for almost two months, waiting for a bed to open up. However, shelters have reduced the number of migrants they are accepting due to the risk of coronavirus infection, which makes finding a bed even more difficult.

The migrant, identified only as Leonardo “N.,” also said there have been cases in which authorities have issued migration documents only to subsequently claim that they are invalid or false.

There are few work opportunities for migrants stuck in Tapachula, but some who have found jobs have been paid less than the minimum wage despite working long hours, he said. “There have been times when the employers refuse to pay … and threaten to call immigration,” he added.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Orbe (sp)

Congress votes to approve ‘revenge porn’ law

By

MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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Revenge porn victim and campaigner Olimpia Melo.

Congress has passed a law to combat “revenge porn” — the publication of private sexual videos, images or audios without the consent of those depicted — with punishment of up to six years in prison.

The law, which had already been approved by the Senate, swept through the Chamber of Deputies with 446 votes in favor and one against, and now goes to the president to be signed into law.

The measures are widely known as the “Olimpia Law,” named after Olimpia Coral Melo, a Puebla woman who was an 18-year-old victim of revenge porn in 2013 and campaigned for their introduction.

Since 2013 Melo has founded Women Against Gender Violence and the National Front for Sorority to prevent online abuse and support women who have experienced it.

In March 2014 she presented a bill before the Puebla Congress, which four years later led to sanctions being introduced against revenge porn.

The federal measures strengthen the law to protect women against violence and enter into the penal code.

Twenty-eight of 32 state legislatures have already passed their own strictures against revenge porn.

Sources: Proceso (sp), Reuters

First-quarter growth estimated at 0.4%, slowed by second wave of Covid

By

MND Staff

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April 30, 2021

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The Mexican economy registered growth of 0.4% between January and March this year compared to the previous quarter, with figures adjusted for seasonality, according to an estimate by the national statistics agency Inegi.

Mexico will have seen six consecutive quarters of contraction and a 2.9% contraction over the past year if the projection is confirmed in final GDP data, scheduled to be released on May 26.

Inegi’s estimate exceeds a Reuters forecast, which predicted zero quarterly growth and a 3.5% annual decline in gross domestic product.

Detailed information from Inegi shows that GDP performance was supported in the first quarter by tertiary activities in the services sector.

The director of Banco Base, Gabriela Siller, highlighted on Twitter that the accumulation of six consecutive quarters of negative growth is something not seen since the third quarter of 1982.

Chief economist for Latin America at Credit Suisse, Alonso Cervera, also expressed concern. “It’s worrying that industrial GDP in Mexico has not grown when consumption in the United States grew more than 10%,” he said.

President of Inegi, Julio Santaella, said the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic slowed the economy’s recovery during the first quarter. Last year, due to restrictions, the economy suffered its worst performance since the Great Depression.

Responding to the growth report, President López Obrador expressed confidence Friday morning that 2021 growth would fall between 5% and 6%, which is only slightly higher than most analysts are predicting.

Sources: El Economista (sp), Reuters, MSN

GM investing US $1 billion in electric car manufacturing, paint plant

By

MND Staff

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April 29, 2021

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GM's plant in Ramos Arizpe. — General Motors will only manufacture electric vehicles at Ramos Arizpe plant by 2024. (GM)

General Motors announced Thursday that it is investing more than US $1 billion to open a new paint plant in Coahuila this June and to prepare to manufacture electric vehicles in the same state starting in 2023.

The company said in a statement that it will open a new paint plant with “innovative technology” at its manufacturing hub in Ramos Arizpe, located just north of the state capital Saltillo. It also said that it will upgrade general infrastructure at the 40-year-old plant, including dining areas, medical services and recreational spaces.

GM said that part of the “initial investment” of more than $1 billion will go to an expansion of the same manufacturing complex that will allow it to become the company’s fifth electric vehicle production site in North America. The existing plants that manufacture electric vehicles are located in Spring Hill, Tennessee; Detroit-Hamtramck, Michigan; Orion, Michigan; and Ontario, Canada.

“General Motors Ramos Arizpe has begun the construction work on its new facilities within the [manufacturing] complex, where GM-brand electric vehicles will be manufactured starting in 2023. Batteries and electric components will also be produced starting in the second half of 2021 with the manufacture of ‘Drive Units’, the propulsion system that drives electric vehicles,” the statement said.

Francisco Garza, president and general director of GM México, said the Mexican subsidiary is “very proud” to contribute to the company’s “zero crashes, zero emissions and zero congestion” vision with the manufacture of electric cars.

“We’re grateful to the federal government and the Coahuila government for driving this investment. It’s great news,” he said, adding that it is indicative of the company’s commitment to Mexico.

Garza also said that he was confident that economic conditions will eventually allow GM to increase its workforce at its Coahuila plant and add an additional shift in some areas.

In addition to making electric vehicles, the Ramos Arizpe plant, which currently employs 5,600 people, will continue to manufacture Chevrolet Equinox and Chevrolet Blazer SUVs, GM said. The plant currently makes vehicles for the domestic market and more than 40 export markets.

GM has been operating in Mexico for more than 85 years and employs more than 21,000 people here. In addition to Coahuila, the company manufactures vehicles in Toluca, México state; Silao, Guanajuato; and San Luis Potosí city. It has corporate offices in Mexico City.

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