López Obrador and Slim sign a contract on the partially built highway between Mitla and Tehuantepec, Oaxaca.
The six-hour trip from Oaxaca city to the coast on winding rural roads may soon be a thing of the past.
On Friday, President López Obrador announced that work will restart on two Oaxaca highways that had been suspended.
Construction of the Barranca Larga-Ventanilla highway, which will connect the state capital to Puerto Escondido, had begun during the administration of president Felipe Calderón, but work has been carried out in fits and starts since, held up by financial problems among the contractors and accusations by rural landowners on the route that they had not been fully paid for their land.
Politicians have repeatedly promised completion of the highway, with the most recent declaration in March 2018, when authorities gave a completion date of November this year.
The new date, according to President López Obrador, is 2022.
“This is such an important highway, because it goes to the coast, to Puerto Escondido,” he said. “This highway was started 10 years ago, but was interrupted, it was discontinued. And now, we’re making a formal commitment to the people of Oaxaca that this highway will be finished by 2022.”
With an investment of 8.3 billion pesos (US $431 million), the Oaxaca-Coast highway will drastically reduce the travel time from Oaxaca City to Puerto Escondido from six to 2 1/2 hours.
Parts of the highway will be built by the residents of the communities it passes through, and without the use of heavy machinery to generate a greater benefit for the region.
López Obrador also announced that work will restart on the Mitla-Tehuantepec highway, which will better connect the state capital to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. He said the highway will be completed within 40 months.
The president signed an agreement with businessman Carlos Slim, under which companies owned by Slim will build much of the highway with an investment of 8 billion pesos, while the federal government will invest 3 billion.
In an interview with La Jornada after the agreement was signed, Slim said that highways and other infrastructure projects in southern Mexico are important to improve the standard of living in the region.
“There need to be a lot of projects,” he said. “We need to develop the railroad, the port, the refinery, and it should be financed by public and private money. We need to promote development in this region.”
Slim also spoke positively of López Obrador’s goals to fight poverty and corruption and create economic growth.
“We can’t agree more with those goals,” he said. “I am enthusiastic about them and I think they’re very good.”
Migrants protest corruption among immigration agents in Tamaulipas.
Migrants waiting at a shelter in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, for an opportunity to apply for asylum in the United States have accused immigration agents of charging up to US $1,500 to expedite the process, a situation they say has left them stranded in the border city with no certainty about when their cases will be heard.
According to the largely Cuban and Venezuelan migrants currently staying at the Casa Senda de Vida (Path of Life House) shelter, National Immigration Institute (INM) agents are not respecting the lists given to them by United States authorities which name the migrants they will process on any given day under the so-called “metering” system.
Migrants told the newspaper El Universal that United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) used to provide the lists to Casa Senda de Vida director Héctor Silva, who would take those called to the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge.
Before they proceeded to the Hidalgo, Texas, port of entry, Silva would take photographs of the migrants, which he then sent to CBP to confirm that the people crossing the border were in fact those who were summoned.
Up to 50 migrants per day were admitted to the U.S. under the system.
However, migrants and volunteers at the shelter said that for the past two months, only INM agents have received the CBP lists on which the would-be asylum applicants staying at Casa Senda de Vida appear.
Mexican immigration agents have taken advantage of the change by excluding some of those named and replacing them with other migrants not staying at the shelter who have paid between US $1,200 and $1,500 for the privilege of having an expedited appointment with United States authorities, they said.
“They come to Senda de Vida and take migrants to the international bridge but on the way, they pick up more people who are also presented to the CBP,” migrants and shelter staff told El Universal.
“We saw that the transfer of people decreased from Monday to Saturday, we began to ask why and discovered that halfway there the agents picked up more people, that’s why the number of people they took from Senda de Vida went down.”
The migrants said the situation has left them feeling desperate and helpless.
Although some are paying agents a hefty fee to present their asylum requests without having to endure a lengthy wait, that doesn’t guarantee that the CBP will hear their cases, a Cuban man said.
“On Monday, 10 women left here [the shelter], my mother-in-law should have left that day but she didn’t go until Tuesday. When they [the 10 women] reached the American side, they were arrested because other people had been picked up that weren’t those the CBP had asked for,” he said.
“After they were arrested, my mother-in-law spoke to two of them and they told her that they were detained because they [the migrants not from Senda de Vida] weren’t on the list . . . I told Héctor Silva what was happening, that [the INM agents] even go to hotels to pick up the migrants. They’re not staying at Senda de Vida and that’s why they’re not on the lists that the CBP sends,” the migrant added.
He said it was possible that migrants staying at the shelter won’t ever have the chance to plead their cases for asylum.
A Venezuelan man who arrived in Reynosa six weeks ago with his wife and two children expressed a similar sentiment, telling El Universal that he feared being stuck in the border city indefinitely.
“We can’t imagine when my family’s turn will arrive because we’ve heard that they’re paying up to US $1,500 . . . It’s time for an investigation about these cases, there are people who have been here longer than me, up to 90 days,” he said.
The INM declined an interview request from El Universal to respond to the corruption claims.
In February, the immigration institute’s delegate in the city was dismissed after being accused of charging migrants US $3,500 not to be deported.
When the GPS said Bodie had arrived at his destination, the airport, it looked more like this.
On the cover of The People’s Guide to Mexico by Carl Franz, Carl proudly displayed his motto, “Wherever you go, there you are.”
For many years I thought this to be hippie babble, the type of phrase born from the colorful contemplation during an altered state. However, it took several years of living in Mexico for the true beauty of this proclamation to awaken my snoozy hamster.
To not feel the need to be anywhere other than where I am is a very Mexican thing as well as a liberating state of mind. But there are times when one should be in a particular place at a particular time, even if one is enjoying the laid-back life in Mexico.
If you happen to be in a Mexican town or city, finding your way around can either be a rewarding cultural excursion which becomes an afternoon of simple joy never to be forgotten, or a mind-wrenching odyssey filled with fear and apprehension.
You will soon discover some streets have no signage with street name or direction of traffic flow. And, I have discovered the hard way, that some street names are used more than once, even quite close to each other, and some streets change names every few kilometers.
However, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, more and more people depend on the latest gadgetry with a multitude of apps to guide their every step in our modern world. From general information to communication to cartography, the smartphone, with its instantaneous repartee in response to your every caress, has taken even Mexico by storm.
The need to be fully engaged at all times with this handheld device is so obsessive in some people they literally die a violent death while clutching their smartphone. Laws against texting while driving have been adopted by most first world nations, but here in Mexico I don’t think such laws have been passed.
If I’m wrong and even if there are such laws, I would expect that enforcement would be sporadic at best. I have never seen anyone pulled over for phone use while driving. On the other hand I have countless times seen police using phones while driving or riding.
Having a high-speed encounter with a distracted driver is one of the many dangers people face on a daily basis here.
Another techno development, given the number of similarly named streets everywhere, is becoming hopelessly and helplessly lost while using Google Maps in an urban area. Things can go wrong with this technology anywhere, but in a place with many of the same street names, there are increased opportunities.
Having only used the analog version (printed road maps) to get around in my life beforehand, I was a bit suspicious when the Captured Tourist Woman requested a GPS for the car we rented in Tijuana several years ago.
It was my first brush with GPS. We were headed into southern California for a few days and she assured me that our new digital companion would guide us through the labyrinth of freeways and surface streets much better than a paper map.
My first problem with our GPS device was the rather snide voice it used while issuing its directives, as if it was a burdensome task to communicate with the lowly mortals within the vehicle.
We made our way out of Mexico to and then around San Diego and then into LA just fine, with our TomTom GPS perched on the dash of the rental car. However, as we left LA, heading back to San Diego, a detour shunted us into uncharted territory.
I say uncharted because the GPS became confused and kept trying to get us back to where we just came from. If we had not left a deposit on the damn thing, I would have pitched it out the window. That was my first hint that my disapproval of the equipment might be well based.
After retail therapy and live theater enlightenment, we crossed back into Tijuana and followed the directions dictated by our digital companion. As we were headed back to the car rental place, close to the Tijuana airport, problems really began.
Tijuana is a town of almost one and a half million people, so the road system is extensive, and busy in many places. After 10 minutes of driving, I said to the GPS unit, and to the CTW, “I don’t think this is the way to the airport.” The GPS ignored my remark.
The CTW didn’t. She assured me the device knew the streets of Tijuana far better than I did, and exhorted me to follow the directions. After 30 minutes of driving we crested a hill which gave me a panoramic view of the city in my rear view mirror. We stopped and looked back at the city and could see the airport in the far distance. A glance at the CTW’s watch confirmed that it was unlikely we’d get to the airport in time now.
I firmly believe our GPS was an evil, vindictive device which sensed I did not care for its haughty manner, and took revenge for my disdain. I know it had been waiting for just the right time to plunge us into a neighborhood of tin and tarpaper shanties, all the while confidently urging us further on with a voice I had learned to loathe before triumphantly announcing, “You have arrived at your destination,” as we looked at what appeared to be the local landfill.
As a mostly rational person, it had never dawned on me there could ever be two or more streets with the same name in any town. But apparently when it comes to naming streets here in the land of mole and mota, rationale has nothing to do with it. Wherever you are in Mexico, where there are streets, you can always find a Revolución, or Benito Juárez, and in big cities maybe two or three of them.
I have wondered from time to time what would have happened if I’d orally confronted TomTom when hearing “Recalculating” or “At the next safe opportunity, do a U-turn” or upon arrival at the landfill.
Would I be told something like “You can’t handle the truth?” Or would it the more Mexican “I’m just telling you what I think you want to hear?”
But the Acme Expat Immersion Therapy and Attitude Modification Program has once again allowed me to rise above what might otherwise be a source of great frustration and inconvenience, and instead allowed me to move into a Zen state, in which I can calmly and capably respond to challenges as they arise, utilizing deep breathing and biofeedback techniques.
Thus I can make my way around these days with GPS instructions echoing, and I still enjoy the drive. Of course I take everything the GPS says with a grain of salt, a bit of lime and a shot of tequila.
And this is the approach I recommend. Always remember, if you don’t know where you are going, you may end up someplace else.
The writer describes himself as a very middle-aged man who lives full-time in Mazatlán with a captured tourist woman and the ghost of a half wild dog. He can be reached at [email protected].
Quintana Roo Governor Joaquín speaks at Caribbean sargassum meeting in Cancún.
Representatives of 13 countries gathered in Cancún this week to discuss a regional strategy to combat sargassum on Caribbean coasts.
Officials from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, Cuba, Panama, Guadeloupe (a French overseas region), Belize, Guyana and Guatemala attended the event during which they participated in roundtable discussions that also considered the effects of sargassum on tourism and the environment.
Quintana Roo Environment Secretary Alfredo Arellano Guillermo told the news agency Notimex that the aim of the summit was to generate a better understanding of the origin of the sargassum problem, to use that knowledge as the basis for the development of solutions and to identify ways to fund efforts to combat the seaweed’s arrival.
“It’s obvious that this meeting will not solve the problem but it can set the basis for regional coordination and collaboration between the affected countries,” he said.
Among the proposals presented were to provide extra support for research into the sargassum phenomenon and to develop a warning system for the weed similar to that in place for hurricanes.
Beach clean-up at Puerto Morelos.
June Marie Soome, general secretary of the Association of Caribbean States, proposed a revision of the Convention for the Protection and Development of the Marine Environment in the Wider Caribbean Region, a 1983 agreement commonly known as the Cartagena Convention.
“We have to revise it to make sure we have a protocol for invasive species, whether that be the lionfish, sargassum or anything else that is affecting our very diverse region. I believe it is a political decision and political strength is needed in order to be able to deal with this problem” she said.
Soome also said that countries affected by sargassum need to look at different ways to obtain external funding for anti-sargassum strategies given that many of them lack their own resources to stop or mitigate the invasion of the seaweed.
“Our countries are in general small countries with small economies. I represent a lot of small islands, I represent a lot of developing countries in Central America so we need financing to fight against sargassum . . .”
Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín González stressed that long-term solutions to the problem are needed to stop the negative effects of the seasonal phenomenon on tourism, which is the backbone of most Caribbean countries.
His administration and the federal government expressed conflicting views about the seriousness of the sargassum problem this week.
For the federal government, it wasn’t sufficiently serious to send a representative to the Cancún meeting. The only Mexicans present were from Quintana Roo.
Three-fourths of the Radial team with samples of their Styrofoam substitute.
A project initiated by students at Guadalajara’s ITESO University won out among 1,000 competitors for the fourth small-business grant awarded annually by FedEx México.
PAPEL, Laboratorio de Ideas received 475,000 pesos (US $24,700) for their creation of a substitute for expanded polystyrene foam packaging material with excellent performance characteristics such as impact absorption, low density, resistance to fire and water and good thermal, acoustic and electrical insulating properties
“Our substitute,” commented representatives of the PAPEL team, “is based on a process with no carbon footprint. On top of that, it’s 100% biodegradable and useful as compost. We hope it will become an ecological alternative to Styrofoam for packaging, and will help reduce global warming.”
FedEx hopes the prize will help PAPEL to move forward toward production and eventually reduce the amount of polystyrene foam — which is highly toxic — now used as packaging material in Mexico: over 32,000 tonnes per year, according to the UNAM Foundation.
To learn more about the company that is producing this ecological Styrofoam substitute, I contacted PAPEL and asked if I could pay them a visit. They kindly invited me to their facilities, which are located at the west end of Guadalajara.
A lampshade: mushroom shaped and mushroom grown.
Upon arrival, I found myself at the door of a company called Radial, not PAPEL. When the door opened, I was warmly welcomed by Ricardo Muttio, Amador Duarte and Rodrigo Martín, who explained to me that they were long-time members of the PAPEL Idea Lab and now they had turned one of those ideas into a small company called Radial Biomateriales.
“Even though most of us are into design and architecture,” Rodrigo Martín told me, “our projects at PAPEL have always been environmentally friendly, for example rainwater catchment and composting. One of those projects revolved around growing mushrooms at home.
“Well, after working with these little mushroom farms for a while, we discovered that changes had occurred at the bottoms of the flowerpots in which we had been growing the mushrooms. Everything that was left in there had solidified into a resilient mass, which had taken on the shape of the inside of the pot as if it had come out of a mold. As architects and designers, we found this very interesting and we decided to focus on biomaterials.”
The team found that two big companies in the United States have been making things out of fungus-based biomaterials for 10 years.
“That encouraged us,” continued Martín, “but I should mention that we are not only interested in making biomaterial to substitute for Styrofoam, but we’re also working on mushroom-based substitutes for wood and for leather.
“To us it looks like the world has passed through stages as far as building material goes. We had the Stone Age, the Iron Age, the Plastic Age and now we are entering the era of biomanufacturing. Instead of big factories using up great quantities of oil, of energy, we are creating a paradigm of using living organisms to do the job for us.
Amador Duarte demonstrates substitutes for Styrofoam and wood.
“We are doing it with mushrooms, but other people are using algae, bacteria, yeasts, collagen: many living organisms. They’re even producing lab-grown hamburger meat and skin substitutes. Biotechnology is going in this direction and we decided to start a Mexican company here in Guadalajara to make these things.”
The researchers showed me several kinds of packaging materials with different textures, including one that was soft and fuzzy to the touch, a natural characteristic of the mushroom that was used. Their wood substitute, instead, was hard but also lightweight.
“It’s based on sawdust and you can work it just like wood,” they told us. What surprised me was their “mushroom leather.” It was tough, flexible and soft. “You can dye it or stamp a form into it,” they said, ”and it’s almost entirely mushroom. Instead of feeding a cow for two years, you can grow your leather in 20 days.”
“OK,” I asked my hosts. “How does all this work? What is the mushroom doing?”
“It’s all in the roots,” replied Amador Duarte. “The mushroom is just the fruit of something growing underground. That something is called mycelium, which looks like a network of roots and it’s this mycelium which solidifies the material. We take farm or industrial residue like straw, sawdust, corn husks or agave bagasse, grind it up and let the mycelium turn it into a solid mass.
“So we are using biology to transform waste at a far lower cost than making things out of petroleum. This means a smaller energy footprint and a biodegradable product. You unpack your new fridge, break up the packaging material with your own hands and throw it into your garden or sprinkle it into your flowerpots and it turns straight into excellent compost.”
In its natural cycle, the mycelium produces this Lingzhi mushroom.
The founders of Radial began their research as students of design, business management and architecture, “We arrived at ITESO with no interest in biology and chemistry, and now, all of a sudden, here we are wearing lab aprons and face masks, bent over trays of fungi, behaving like biologists and botanists.”
This gave me pause for thought. It was my generation that happily filled our planet’s garbage dumps and oceans with polystyrene foam, a poisonous substance that won’t break down for hundreds or thousands of years, that will continue all that time to find its way into the bellies of fish, fowl, animals and people.
We did it without thinking as we tossed those wonderfully insulating coffee cups into the trash, blissfully ignorant of their impact on the environment.
Many of those of my generation are so set in their ways that no ecological message will ever get through to them, but their children go to school and at all levels of schooling, that message of concern about the environment is getting through, raising awareness, as the Radial researchers demonstrated to me.
This awareness is deviating the new generation from the routines and ruts in which so many of us born in the 20th century may be stuck.
There seems to be hope after all.
[soliloquy id="82679"]
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.
Fans of barbacoa can have their fill starting next week at the Barbacoa Festival in Actopan, Hidalgo.
From July 5-14, foodies and festival-goers will be able to enjoy 10 whole days of hearty eating at Mexico’s oldest and most famous celebration of Hidalgo’s most celebrated dish.
The festival began as a unique feature of the over four-centuries-old patron saint celebrations. Barbacoa is a special preparation of meat wrapped in agave leaves and slow-cooked overnight in a pit. Famous in Hidalgo, it shares table-space at the festival with its porcine cousin ximbó.
Hidalgo is also famous for its pulque — an alcoholic beverage made from fermented agave sap — and flavor-infused curados, both of which will also be available in great abundance and variety at Actopan’s festival.
On July 8, the region’s most celebrated barbacoa masters will display their skills, each vying to impress diners with their special recipes and cuts of meat in a competition that marks the height of the festival.
In between bites of tacos and sips of pulque, festival-goers will be free to wander between musical acts, an artisanal market, theater and circus performances, dances and a variety of rides and attractions for children and families.
A perceived failure to combat crime and corruption as well as the lack of a major accomplishment are the main factors behind a slump in the approval rating of Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a new poll shows.
Published today by the newspaper El Universal, the poll shows that 39% of respondents approve of Sheinbaum’s performance, a 15% decline since March.
A higher percentage of respondents – 42.8% – said they disapprove of the mayor’s performance, while just under 14% said they neither approved nor disapproved.
Asked to name the biggest mistake of the administration of the Morena party mayor since it took office last December, just under 30% of respondents cited the failure to combat high levels of crime.
More than three-quarters of those polled said they disapproved of the way that Sheinbaum and her administration are dealing with crime, while 86.5% said there had been minimal or zero progress in combating it.
Failure to combat corruption was cited by 7% of respondents as the biggest mistake of the Sheinbaum-led government, while just under 6% of those polled said it hadn’t put a foot wrong.
Other mistakes cited by respondents included the failure to combat drug trafficking, the government’s environmental policies, non-compliance with promises and the implementation (or lack thereof) of social programs. However, none of those errors was mentioned by more than 4% of respondents.
Just over 2% said the biggest mistake of the government was to have a woman in the top job, while similar percentages cited one of a failure to combat poverty, create jobs, increase access to health care, reduce traffic or improve public transportation as the number one boo-boo.
Asked to cite the greatest achievement of the six-month-old government, 36.2% of poll respondents said there wasn’t one.
Just under 12% said the implementation of social programs was the administration’s major accomplishment, while 5.5% cited its environmental policies.
Sheinbaum presented an ambitious new environmental plan this month, which aims to provide water service to every home in Mexico City in six years’ time, reduce air pollution by 30% and plant 15 million trees, among other goals.
Between 4% and 5% of respondents cited one of improvements to public services, the promotion of culture, the combatting of crime or the provision of water supply as the government’s greatest achievement.
Sheinbaum was given an average score of 5.9 out of 10 for her overall performance, a decline of 0.9 points compared to the poll published by El Universal in March.
Just under 40% of respondents believe that Mexico City will improve under the Morena party mayor’s leadership, a decline of more than 20% compared to when she took office and down 10% on March numbers.
A third of those polled said the capital will stay the same with Sheinbaum at the helm of the government, while 22% believe it will get worse.
Mayra González, Nissan's new head of global sales.
Nissan México president Mayra González, the first woman to lead a country subsidiary of the Japanese auto maker, is off to Japan to take up a new post as head of the company’s global sales.
After graduating with a degree in marketing from the Monterrey Technological Institute, González, 40, began her career as a salesperson at an automotive dealership, and started working in sales at Nissan in 2001.
She worked her way up in the company to become the first woman on the company’s operations committee in 2012, and president in 2016.
Looking back on her presidency, she thinks she successfully led the company through a difficult time.
“I think that when I started leading the company, I was driving a ship through calm waters,” she said. “But then we went into a stormy ocean, and there were a lot of complications. And more than what I brought, I think that what I focused on was creating the right team to pilot that ship as best as possible, and that’s what we’ve done.”
She believes it was her achievements during her career that propelled her into the president’s job “and not because of a plan to present an image of diversity in the company,” she told the newspaper El Universal.
Education Secretariat offices after students went on a spray-painting spree.
Students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Guerrero vandalized four offices belonging to the state Secretariat of Education with spray paint on Thursday to demand the resignation of the education secretary.
Students from the Raúl Isidro Burgos college accused Arturo Salgado Uriostegui of infiltrating personnel within the school to create division between teachers and the administration.
The students also demanded that striking teachers resume classes or that the state government send replacements. The teachers have been on strike since May 23 when students forcibly shaved the heads of two of them.
Yesterday morning, several groups of students traveled by bus to the state capital, Chilpancingo, where they spray painted exterior and interior walls, floors, staircases and furniture with slogans demanding Uriostegui’s resignation, and others that made reference to the 2014 disappearance of 43 students, who were also from the Ayotzinapa school.
Officials from the secretariat promised to meet with the students to hear their demands.
Two people can fit snugly into one pair of officers' new pants.
First, the overweight Federal Police officers sent to work with the National Immigration Institute (INM) were called fifí, or elitist by the institute’s chief.
Now they have been mocked with oversize uniforms whose pants are big enough to fit two people.
One Federal Police officer who was sent to the INM for immigration enforcement in Tapachula, Chiapas, told Radio Formula that the new members were provided with low-quality uniforms made up of hat, t-shirts and pairs of 3XL pants, which he said can fit two or three people.
“It’s sad to see how the members of the institute step on us and humiliate us in this way,” he said. “What kind of image are we going to present to citizens if we’re dressed like this?”
A bit loose around the waist.
The officer noted that the uniforms given to the Federal Police officers are not the same as those used by regular INM officers.
Photos posted by the officers on social media show them using cords to stop the pants from falling down — they don’t have belt loops. Other photos indicate that the pants can indeed fit two people inside.
The police have already complained about working conditions. In response, INM director Francisco Garduño called the federal cops “fifís” (elitist) and said they were complaining because they are accustomed to staying at hotels and eating at buffets, although he later apologized.
On Thursday, Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo acknowledged that the officers are working in substandard conditions and that working conditions in the INM as well as for all security forces need to be improved.
“We can’t, as citizens, or as the government, be so demanding of them, when historically we haven’t concerned ourselves with guaranteeing them a dignified life,” he said. “Peace and security can only be the fruit of justice, and that justice needs to start with the improvement of the conditions of those Mexicans who are willing to give their lives, if necessary, to protect the public.”
