San Ángel is one of 21 Mexico City neighborhoods that were designated 'magical.'
The tourism commission of the Mexico City Congress will ask the city government to revive the capital’s “magical neighborhoods” tourism promotion program.
The program, which designated 21 barrios as magical, was created in 2011 but was never formally launched and its funding was discontinued in 2012.
Commission members argue that the program’s reactivation will create new jobs, stimulate the local economy and rehabilitate run-down urban spaces.
Commission president Ana Patricia Báez Guerrero explained that the magical neighborhoods program would complement the existing Turismo de Barrio (Neighborhood Tourism) scheme.
The latter was created by the current government in order to promote lesser known tourist attractions in Mexico City and develop new ones in less visited parts of the capital.
Báez said the two programs together would provide greater opportunities for all 16 Mexico City boroughs to promote their tourism offerings and attract more visitors.
The request will be directed to the Secretariat of Tourism, Báez explained, adding that the Congress is also seeking an update on the progress of the Turismo de Barrio scheme.
Among the 21 neighborhoods that were designated as magical in 2011 are San Ángel, Santa María la Ribera, Coyoacán, Roma-Condesa, Xochimilco, La Merced, Mixcoac and Mexico City’s home of Mariachi music, Plaza Garibaldi.
Infrastructure spending is down, to the chagrin of builders.
Activity in the construction sector declined 9.1% in July, the biggest drop since June of 2001.
The decline followed six consecutive months of economic downturns in the building sector, which the president of the Mexican Chamber of the Construction Industry (CMIC) blamed on low levels of public investment this year.
Eduardo Ramírez told the newspaper El Economista that the situation is causing “great despair” among builders and construction companies.
To the end of July, just 24% of resources allocated to public works projects had been spent, the CMIC said this week, and a 6% cut to infrastructure spending was proposed in the government’s 2020 budget.
Ramírez said that there is a risk that some construction companies will be forced to shut down, adding that the CMIC is seeking to meet with President López Obrador to discuss the situation.
“There is already great despair in the sector because, despite the importance that construction represents, [the government] hasn’t given it a place. We’re not going to confront anyone but we are seeking the opportunity to tell President Andrés Manuel López Obrador directly that we are his allies to revive the economy. We’re confident that he will receive us soon,” he said.
Ramírez said that the CMIC has already met with other government officials – including presidential chief of staff Alfonso Romo – who agreed that greater public investment is needed to stimulate the construction sector.
However, their support for higher infrastructure spending has not yet translated into concrete benefits for the sector, he added.
“We’ve insisted on having a meeting with the president to set out the situation that the sector is going through. We want him to see . . . the important asset he has in Mexican builders to achieve his regional development and job creation goals,” Ramírez said.
One government infrastructure project that will provide ample opportunities for the construction sector is the Santa Lucía airport. However, the project is currently delayed by legal action against it.
López Obrador reiterated this week that opposition to the airport is politically motivated, adding that he expected the injunctions granted against it to be overturned soon because they have no legal basis.
“. . . There has been a delay because of these injunctions but we’re doing everything in accordance with the legal framework [to defeat them],” he said.
Another major government infrastructure project, the Maya Train, is not currently facing any legal action that could delay its construction, the president said.
“Touch wood, they’re not going to file injunctions [against it too] . . .”
Photographer and scuba diver Manfred Meiners. José Martínez Verea Fotografía
My mind is reeling. I set off — a few hours ago — to investigate why my friend Manfred Meiners just won the excellence award presented yearly by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to one — and only one — person thought to have contributed the most among this renowned organization’s thousands of members in North America.
And the prize goes to — a Mexican. Well, that could be a surprise to those who don’t know that Mexico is in North America, but the fact that it went to this particular Mexican conservationist is in no way surprising.
So why is my mind reeling? Because Google revealed Meiners’ name associated with so many ecologically sound projects that I’m no longer asking why he received that prize, but rather why he wouldn’t be the one to receive it. The people at IUCN certainly knew what they were doing.
Manfred Meiners is a cinematographer, a photographer and a scuba diver from Guadalajara, Mexico’s second largest city. A few days ago he was invited to Ottawa, Canada, where IUCN executives were meeting in preparation for their World Conservation Congress, held once every four years.
In case you are unfamiliar with its name, the IUCN is the group that maintains and updates the Red List of Threatened Species and has been the motor behind conservation projects for over 70 years.
Filming the release of a newly tagged flamingo in Yucatán. Claudio Contreras Koob
“They told me they were giving me an award for the work I’ve done with them over the last 10 years in the fields of education and communication,” Meiners explained to me. “So they flew me to Canada, but I missed a connecting flight along the way, so I arrived in Ottawa really late and in my hotel I barely had a chance to take a shower.
“Then I had to make a decision: am I going to be on time or am I going to iron my shirt? Well, I decided being on time was more important, so I received the award with a wrinkled shirt, but with lots of warmth and good wishes from the members of IUNC. They gave me a wood carving (from certificate wood, of course) created by an indigenous artist in Chiapas name Pedro Jiménez: a beautiful piece which my family and I really love.
“It was an honor to receive a prize made by a paisano artist. This experience has really charged my battery to keep working on conservation issues.”
Over the years, Meiners has made numerous films documenting the success stories of humble communities which have learned to work with nature rather than against it. These films are, for the most part, narrated by local people deeply involved in a project, many of them campesinos whom Meiners has managed to put at ease for the camera.
Because I was asked to translate the subtitles of several of these documentaries into English, I had a good chance to see how conservation theory was being put into practice in the field, literally.
One of these documentaries is called Vive el Paisaje (Become One with the Landscape) and shows the practical application in the mountains of western Jalisco of a concept developed in France called the biocultural landscape. To see the English subtitles, click on “cc” at the bottom of the screen.
Manfred Meiners managed to photograph this otter in Jalisco’s La Vega Dam.
“The way we do farming now,” says a local man at the start of the film, “all this technification, this chaos, this overuse of insecticides and fertilizers . . . It’s impacting human life and harming wildlife too. We’re killing the Earth, but the Earth is our patrimony . . . so how can we be productive?”
The film goes on to present the concept of the biocultural landscape, “which combines the biological landscape with the culture of the communities that exist within that landscape, a policy tool which seeks the consensus of all the local stakeholders in a specific area.”
We then visit numerous communities, where we see agriculture, forest management and cottage industries flourishing in a sustainable way and without damage to the environment.
Another project where we see the hand of Manfred Meiners is called Albora. It is a response to the tendency of lugubrious headlines to dominate Mexico’s media, creating an atmosphere of gloom, cynicism or terror which simply does not jive with the joie de vivre of ordinary people living and working in every corner of the country.
One corollary of this zest for life is creativity for solving problems and I don’t just mean problems like how to get a 50-year-old jalopy back on the road. Mexicans are attacking real problems affecting the whole planet, like finding a harmless substitute for styrofoam, with as much imagination and creativity as environmentalists anywhere on the planet, and Albora is out to set the record straight.
This organization, founded in 2015, searches out and investigates environmental projects that really make a difference and helps activists publish their stories.
Manfred Meiners of Guadalajara receives IUCN. Jürgen Hoth
An example is Seeds of Change by Clara Migoya, which tells the story of The Mexican Network of Educational Gardens, a project that took root in 2018 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, and brings together students, teachers, parents, nutritionists, campesinos, academics and activists (just to name a few of the participants), all working together to reconnect the new generation with the natural world.
Migoya introduces us to Loreto, a teacher whose school garden is considered a landmark in San Cristóbal: “Loreto has a wide smile and a radiant face. While she showed me the garden she cultivates with ‘her children,’ I could hear the enthusiasm in her voice: ‘Here we raise worms, we observe insects and bees, we decide on seeds, we plant and we harvest.’
“Loreto tells me that for her students one of the most exciting things about the garden is harvesting what they grew and then cooking it. Once a month they all get together to prepare a breakfast. The boys and girls all participate in the same way, including cooking and cleaning up, something that may seem insignificant, but which represents a radical change from the patterns they are exposed to at home.”
Clara Migoya’s story — accompanied by gorgeous photos — can be found on Albora’s web page along with many other success stories that deserve to be told.
When I asked Manfred Meiners for one final example of one of his projects, he said, “Alright, you know how everyone dreams of bringing back extinct species? Well, in a way we have managed to do that . . .”
Meiners went on to tell me the story of the tequila splitfin, a little fish that, for a while, was listed on the IUCN Red List as extinct in its native environment, “but is now back thanks to the efforts of a lot of good people at Michoacán University.”
That story is too long to tell here, but watch for it soon on Mexico News Daily.
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.
Residents and authorities have battened down the hatches as Hurricane Lorena approaches the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula.
The Category 1 hurricane was 55 kilometers east of Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, at 1:00pm CDT on Friday and was forecast to pass near or over the southern portion of the Baja peninsula later in the day, the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
A hurricane warning is in effect between La Paz and Puerto Cortés and a hurricane watch is in effect for the east coast of the peninsula between La Paz and San Evaristo. A tropical storm warning is in effect for Puerto Cortés to Cabo San Lázaro.
The NHC upgraded the storm to a Category 1 hurricane early on Friday. Maximum sustained winds are near 120 kilometers per hour with higher gusts and some additional strengthening is possible as the storm slowly moves towards land.
With forecasters predicting damaging winds, flash flooding and life-threatening surf conditions along the Pacific coast of Baja California, residents prepared as best as they could on Thursday.
In the Los Cabos area, boat owners pulled their vessels from the water and shopkeepers covered windows with plywood, the Associated Press reported.
“If we don’t get the yacht out, the waves can damage it,” said Juan Hernández, who rents his boat to foreign visitors. It’s “a preventative measure for when a cyclone threatens.”
Baja California Sur authorities suspended classes for Friday so that schools can be used as shelters if necessary. Governor Carlos Mendoza Davis said on Twitter this morning that 790 people had already decided to leave their homes and take refuge in shelters in Los Cabos.
A total of 177 properties across all five Baja California Sur municipalities were available to be used as shelters.
State government secretary general Álvaro de la Peña said that the government has taken “preventative measures” to prepare for the hurricane’s arrival. “Rations, gasoline, all supplies are guaranteed. There is no need for panic buying,” he said.
“Lorena is going to dump a lot of water,” said Carlos Alfredo Godínez, deputy secretary for Civil Protection in the state. Heavy rain is already falling in Los Cabos, Mendoza Davis said on Friday morning.
The NHC said that Lorena is expected to produce rainfall of 7-15 centimeters across far southern Baja California Sur with maximum amounts of 20cm.
The hurricane caused flooding and minor landslides in parts of Jalisco and across Colima on Thursday. All 10 municipalities in the latter state were affected, AP reported. Roads were flooded, dozens of trees came down in the strong winds and some areas lost power.
However, Colima Governor José Ignacio Peralta said there were no deaths or significant damage to infrastructure.
The NHC said that Lorena will gradually move away from the west coast of the Baja California peninsula tonight and Saturday, and then will degenerate into a remnant low or be absorbed in a couple of days by Tropical Storm Mario, which was 555 kilometers south of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula at 10:00am CDT.
Senator Guadiana has proposed legislation to punish electricity theft.
A lawmaker has presented a legislative proposal that would punish electricity theft with up to 10 years in prison.
The objective of Morena party Senator and energy commission chairman Armando Guadiana’s bill is to protect the transmission and distribution of electricity.
“Although the federal government initiated a head-on fight against the theft of gasoline, there are still no guidelines for the theft of electricity, even as this problem damages state coffers by millions of pesos,” says the text of the bill.
It proposes a penalty of three to 10 years in prison and a fine of over 1 million pesos (US $52,000). It would also include fines totaling three times the amount of what would have been charged for the illegally consumed energy.
The law would also apply to anyone impeding or intimidating a public servant engaged in suspending service to someone involved in the criminal use of electricity.
It proposes a prison sentence of two to 20 years for the use of Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) services without a contract, or for tampering with meters.
Lastly, it includes a prison sentence of six to 10 years and fine of over 1 million pesos for anyone who illegally commercializes CFE services and installations.
The Senate Energy Commission will discuss and vote on the bill, and if passed, it will be voted on in the plenary session.
Prosecutors seek a life sentence for ex-attorney general Veytia.
United States prosecutors are asking for a life sentence for former Nayarit attorney general Édgar Veytia, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges in a U.S. court earlier this year.
“The accused provided substantial assistance to a violent drug-trafficking organization,” the prosecution wrote in a memo. “In exchange for bribes, he allowed . . . the transportation of drugs and violent score-settling.”
Veytia, who is accused of protecting drug traffickers while he was attorney general between 2013 and 2017, will be sentenced next Thursday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the same court where notorious trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was tried. Veytia’s defense lawyer, Jeffrey Lichtman, also defended Guzmán. Veytia’s crime carries a minimum sentence of 10 years.
According to a court document seen by the newspaper El Universal, the former politician was also known as “El Diablo,” or “The Devil,” worked with a drug trafficker named Juan Francisco Patrón Sánchez, who moved a half-tonne of heroin and 100 kilograms of cocaine into the United States every month.
Veytia accepted bribes from Patrón to free the latter’s partners from prison, arrest his rivals and cover up at least one murder, among other crimes.
“The government does not dispute that the accused faced a difficult task: apply the law in a place with significant corruption,” the prosecution memo reads. “However, it’s clear that . . . he chose a life of corruption that put Nayarit in danger. Veytia, a U.S. citizen with residence in California, could have left the life of corruption behind, but he decided to aid these violent drug trafficking organizations and accept the benefits.”
Two trains collided in Nopala, Hidalgo, Thursday morning after one had been stopped by thieves intending to rob its cargo.
An engineer on the first train said he was forced to stop by a barricade made of tires, branches and rocks, at which point the thieves showed up and began stealing the appliances and audio equipment the train was carrying.
Meanwhile, another train transporting grain and traveling in the same direction slammed into the back of the stopped train.
The collision caused 30 freight cars to derail and sparked numerous fires.
Rescue teams, security officers and Mexican military forces worked to put out the fires and salvage what products they could from the wreckage.
The crash left three people injured, who were taken to the municipal health center.
The new security center caught a kidnapping in process.
The new C5-i security system that went into operation on Wednesday in Michoacán is off to a good start, contributing to the freeing of a mother and her two daughters from kidnappers, officials said.
Through security cameras, C5-i personnel saw a group of men get out of a vehicle on a street in Morelia and enter a family’s residence through a rooftop terrace.
C5-i analysts alerted the police, who were able to enter the residence, located in the Ilustres Novohispanos neighborhood of Morelia, and free the woman and her daughters who were being held against their will. Four suspects were arrested.
Police also confiscated three firearms and a vehicle.
A video obtained by the newspaper El Universal shows the moment of the rescue, when the police enter the residence to free the three victims, who can be seen huddled together, crying out of relief.
“Don’t be afraid, we’re the police,” an officer says in the video.
“You’re safe now, you’re safe now,” says another.
“Don’t leave me alone, please don’t leave me alone,” one of the children can be heard saying, before fainting.
The C5-i system employs 360 analysts to monitor the state through over 6,000 security cameras.
A Canadian woman who suffered serious injuries from a shooting in San Luis Potosí says she received little help from either the Mexican or Canadian governments to get back home.
Hiba Sheikh, of Surrey, British Columbia, was visiting a friend in the central Mexican city when disaster struck at dinner.
“We were sitting and eating and talking [on the balcony], and all of a sudden I hear a big bang, like fireworks sounds,” she told broadcaster Global News.
“When I looked to my right, I saw two guys [on the main floor] firing up in the air, and I was in complete trauma and shock.”
Sheikh, 31, fell to the floor and saw “blood everywhere.” Then she looked at her leg and realized she had been shot.
“It was covered in blood, my dress was drenched in blood, and I was almost passing out,” she said. “I just remember people saying there were two guys shooting outside.”
Bystanders attended to Sheikh’s wounds and kept her conscious while they waited for paramedics to arrive and transport her to hospital.
Sheikh said the bullet pierced through the balcony and hit her in the ankle. It shattered several bones as it passed through the other side of her leg.
There were no other injuries or deaths during the incident. Local police and the state Attorney General’s Office are investigating but no suspects have been identified or detained.
Sheikh said she was primarily worried about getting back home on her flight scheduled for the next day, but she got little assistance from either the Mexican government or her own. She said that Global Affairs Canada did nothing beyond making a phone call.
“They just informed my parents, and that was it,” she said. “I had to travel back on my own and figure that out on my own. The expenses I had to cover on my own.”
San Luis Potosí Governor Juan Manuel Carreras promised Sheikh that the government would cover her travel and medical expenses, she said, but the promise was not kept. She ended up flying back to Canada at her own expense two days after the shooting.
After receiving no help and seeing no justice in the case, Sheikh feels discouraged.
“The guy’s running free and I want justice, because he owes me big time,” she said. “This is not a joke.”
Currently bedridden at home, Sheikh said it could take six to seven months for her ankle to heal and for her to be able to walk freely again.
When she is able to walk, Mexico is one country she’ll never set foot in again.
“I don’t ever want to go back to that country,” she said. “It’s a matter of safety.”
Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú of Guatemala speaks at the Mérida summit.
President López Obrador has told Nobel Peace Prize laureates gathered in Mérida, Yucatán, for a four-day summit that his government is determined to achieve peace in Mexico without resorting to authoritarianism or the use of force.
Speaking at a welcome dinner on Thursday for the attendees of the 17th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, López Obrador said that he is committed to finding a peaceful solution to the violence plaguing the country.
“What we want is to achieve total peace but we don’t want a peace achieved with authoritarianism, with the use of force. We don’t want a peace of graves, we want peace that originates in the delivery of justice, we’ve always said that peace is the result of justice,” he said.
“We have problems of insecurity and violence and [past governments] have wanted to confront the scourge of violence with the use of force, with prisons, with heavy-handed threats and harsher [prison] sentences – even with extremely authoritarian acts – with raids, with massacres, with exterminations and it’s been proven that it doesn’t work, that we have to attend to the causes that give rise to violence,” the president said.
After charging that the idea that people are “evil by nature” is “outdated, anachronistic and conservative,” López Obrador said that his government’s pacification strategy for Mexico includes providing employment and study opportunities for the country’s young people, who he claimed were abandoned by past governments.
Guests pose with President López Obrador at Mérida summit.
He said earlier this week that the government’s welfare programs, the National Guard, the campaign against the consumption of drugs, preventing corruption in the justice system, respecting human rights and confronting arms trafficking were all part of the plan to bring peace to Mexico.
The president told the peace prize winners, among whom were former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú, that his administration has an “enormous” task ahead of it in order to “carry out a transformation” of Mexico “without violence.”
But the enormity of the task – Mexico is on track to record its most violent year in recent history in 2019 – doesn’t justify “more of the same,” López Obrador said, again referring to the strategy of past governments to use force to attempt to combat crime.
The president said his election didn’t represent “a simple change of government” but rather “a change of regime,” a reference to the “fourth transformation” he says he is bringing to Mexico.
The peace summit, which commenced on Thursday and will run until Sunday, comes just days after López Obrador sent a proposal to Congress for an amnesty law that would allow some criminals, including young people convicted of minor drug offenses, to be released from prison.
Colombia passed a similar amnesty law in late 2016 that protected guerrilla fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, from prosecution for minor crimes committed during the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war.
Former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos issued a warning about amnesty.
Juan Manuel Santos, who was president of Colombia between 2010 and 2018 and the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2016, said on Twitter on December 28, 2016 that Congress’ approval of the amnesty law was the “first step towards the consolidating peace.”
However, asked about López Obrador’s amnesty plan at a press conference in Mérida on Thursday, the ex-president expressed a very different view.
“Amnesty has evolved. The world learned that the clean slate [approach] has more problems than benefits in the long run. But transitional justice . . . returns rights to victims,” Santos said.
Transitional justice includes measures such as criminal prosecutions, the establishment of truth commissions, the payment of reparation for victims of human rights violations and the reform of laws and institutions, including the police, judiciary and military, according to the International Center for Transitional Justice.
Santos also told reporters that the solution to the problem of drug trafficking lies in the lifting of the prohibition of narcotics.
“Prohibition is the source of criminality . . . The world has to evolve toward what happened with liquor in the United States,” the ex-president said referring to the end of prohibition in 1933.
“It’s been 45 years since the war on drugs was declared and the war hasn’t been won. Colombia is the country that has had the most victims and we’re still the main exporter of cocaine.”
