The math olympiad winners in the Dominican Republic.
Two teams of young Mexican mathematicians rose to the top of the Central American-Caribbean Math Olympiad (OMCC), winning gold and silver medals at the event hosted by the Dominican Republic.
First place was won by the team of Karla Rebeca Mungía from Sinaloa and Daniel Ochoa Quintero from Tamaulipas, while their peers Jacob from Yucatán and Luis Eduardo Martínez from Nuevo León placed second.
Mexican teams have consistently ranked at the top among their regional peers, bringing home gold medals for the past 11 years, the organizers of the Mexican Math Olympiad (OMM) said.
The president of OMM’s organizing committee, Rogelio Valdez Delgado, commended the sponsorship of the disposable consumer product firm Bic, which paid for the youths’ transportation, lodging and travel expenses. He also thanked the support given by the National Council of Science and Technology (Conacyt).
Three of the four students belong to the group of 12 math whizzes that will be traveling to South Africa in early August to participate in an international olympiad.
The team of primary and secondary school students were in the news last month when it was revealed they would be unable to send a full complement to the match because of budget cuts at Conacyt.
But Guadalajara filmmaker Guillermo del Toro and beer maker Grupo Modelo came forward to help out. The former will pay for the students’ flights while the latter has offered to pay for the team’s accommodation.
Police take aim during a gunfight yesterday in Tlajomulco, Jalisco.
Five people were killed on Friday in four coordinated attacks against Jalisco state police in the municipalities of Tlajomulco and Zapopan. Two of the dead were police officers.
The first attack happened at 7:00am, when a civilian with an assault rifle shot at a police commander as she was driving in her pickup truck. The commander was unhurt but her husband, who was in the passenger’s seat, was seriously injured.
Two hours later, detective Jesús Adán Martín del Campo was killed as he left his house in Tlajomulco. His nine-year-old son was wounded with a bullet to the leg.
After the Tlajomulco attack, police began patrolling the area and were hit with grenades and rifle fire from a residence near where Martín was killed. The grenades did not detonate, but 300 police officers and soldiers fought for an hour and a half to take control of the property in the Jardines de Edén residential area.
Six officers were injured and two alleged criminals were killed, and three people inside the house were taken into custody. It is not known whether those arrested were suspects or people being held against their will in the house. Police also secured 20 rifles, 20 handguns and two grenades from the house.
Shortly after the battle, another off-duty officer from a homicide unit was killed in a nearby housing development. His body was found naked, in the street in front of his residence.
“The officer from homicide, when he realized that people were coming into his house, tried to escape,” said Jalisco Attorney General Gerardo Solís Gómez at a press conference. “They probably caught him when he was taking a shower, which explains how they found him.”
Another person, who police say they are fairly certain was involved in the killing of the homicide agent, was found dead nearby, apparently having been hit by a car and killed as he left the scene on a bicycle.
Solís assured reporters that the attacks took place because state authorities “are damaging the interests of organized crime.”
Ichkabal in Quintana Roo: more research to be done before it can open.
Deeper research into the ancient Mayan city of Ichkabal will be carried out before it is opened to the public, said the Quintana Roo chief of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), providing a better experience for visitors when it does open.
Margarito Molina told the newspaper El Economista that obtaining resources to carry out the additional research is a priority for INAH.
Researchers’ conclusions about the geopolitical organization of the city and the lives of its erstwhile Mayan inhabitants will enable visitors to have a more educational and informative experience at the southern Quintana Roo site, he said.
“The site is very old, it dates from the early pre-classic period. The important thing is to keep carrying out research for its opening in order to be able to present to the public the interpretation, the results of the research and an understanding about the culture,” Molina said.
“A visitor can’t [just] see the structures and understand the daily life of the settlement. That’s the work of archaeologists, historians and also linguists,” he added.
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Beyond the additional research, INAH director Diego Prieto said that before the site can open a range of infrastructure needs to be built at the site including a formal entrance, an interpretation center and public washrooms.
Luis Chimal Balam, head of the Bacalar ejido, said earlier this year that INAH has proposed paying 400,000 pesos (US $21,000) for each of the 121 hectares covered by Ichkabal and the surrounding area that needs to be developed to access the site.
But the 165 ejidatarios decided that they don’t want to give up ownership of the land. Instead, they wish to be partners in the development of the archaeological site and direct beneficiaries of the tourism it attracts.
Located around 60 kilometers west of Laguna de Bacalar in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco, Ichkabal is one of the most important Mayan cities of the pre-classical era.
It was inhabited by kings of the Kaan dynasty and some of its structures are taller than the pyramids at Chichén Itzá in Yucatán.
The Quintana Roo government has said that the recovery and opening of Ichkabal could attract investment in hotels and real estate to the tune of US $1 billion over the next 15 years.
A highway blockade — one of many — protesting delay in delivery of fertilizer.
The wait for fertilizer in Guerrero has been a long one — and it’s not over yet. Most farmers are still waiting for the federal government to deliver the promised supplies.
Just 18% of 180,000 tonnes of the product pledged to farmers in the southern state had been distributed as of yesterday, according to a report in the newspaper Reforma, while the Secretariat of Agriculture publicly acknowledged that delivery is delayed.
However, the coordinator of the National Fertilizer Program said the pace of distribution has been increasing and that once peak operational capacity is reached, deliveries will be made to more than 10,000 farmers per day.
Jorge Gage Francois predicted that would occur by Tuesday at the latest.
The official anticipated that 55% of the fertilizer will have been distributed by the end of June and that by July 15, all farmers in the state will have the product they were promised.
Fertilizers for the cultivation of corn, beans and rice are being delivered from 82 distribution centers, Gage said.
Since late last month, farmers in several parts of Guerrero have been protesting against the slow delivery. On May 31, about 400 farmers detained soldiers and police officers in the municipality of Heliodoro Castillo to demand that the government honor its agreement.
They argued that the delivery of the fertilizer was urgent because the rainy season had started, and they might miss their chance to plant.
This week, farmers from the municipalities of Zapotitlán Tablas, Atlixtac, Acatepec and Olinalá have maintained blockades at different points of the Tlapa-Chilapa federal highway, and three councilors from Zapotitlán were detained and held hostage.
Farmers from Teloloapan blocked the highway from that municipality to Iguala and another group of growers broke into a government rural development center.
Leaders of the National Union of Agricultural Workers (UNTA), the Guerrero State Corn Council and the National Farmers Confederation, among other groups, have warned that the protests against the government’s failure to distribute the fertilizer will continue next week.
Marco Reyes, UNTA’s Guerrero leader, predicted that corn production will fall this year due to the delay in the fertilizer’s delivery.
The state governor blamed the delay on the number of bureaucratic procedures farmers must complete in order to obtain the fertilizer.
The masked dancers of Temascalcingo, calling for rain.
The state of México town of Temascalcingo was transformed Thursday for a grand fiesta as residents donned masks and danced in a plea to the heavens to open and unleash rains for thirsty crops.
Known for being the birthplace of celebrated landscape painter José María Velasco, the town celebrates the Catholic feast day of Corpus Christi, held 60 days after Easter, but fuses it with older pre-Columbian traditions of ceremonies to end drought and ask for good harvests.
Every year, the festivities begin on Wednesday when dancers of all ages from each of the pueblo’s neighborhoods take to the streets, their faces covered by larger-than-life masks handcrafted from cactus fibers to recall the features of aged ancestors.
As they dance through the streets of Temascalcingo to the music of a violin, drums and bells, the masked dancers, called Xitas, are joined by another dressed as a bull with a cob of corn in its mouth to symbolize fertility.
On Thursday, the Xitas are once again called into the streets by church bells to accompany each neighborhood’s patron saint to altars erected specially for the celebration. After prayers of thanks, the fiesta is rejoined by all the residents, who dance and share freshly prepared mole, tortillas, beans, chicken in pork skin and pulque.
Residents dance wearing masks to represent the ancestors.
Later in the day, the dancers throw candy to young children before everyone gathers in a large circle for a ritual theater and dance presentation that symbolizes the circle of life for the town’s crops and residents.
Legend has it that the unique festival began long ago when, after a series of serious droughts which were thought to be a divine punishment, all the pueblo’s residents fell asleep and received a vision from God, who instructed them to begin to dance to bring the rains. During the annual rain dances, the residents began to use their famous masks to symbolize the wisdom of the elderly.
However, other sources discount the myth, asserting the existence of records documenting the unique fusion of the Catholic feast and pre-Hispanic traditions from as far back as 1526 — just one year after Hernán Cortés ordered the death of the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc.
Mexico's Supreme Court has ruled that asking for financial records violates the constitution.
The Supreme Court (SCJN) has ruled that it is unconstitutional for federal law enforcement authorities to request the bank records of accused criminals without a court order.
With six magistrates voting in favor and five against, the court determined that article 142 of the Credit Institutions Law – which allows the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to obtain the financial records of suspected criminals – violates people’s constitutional right to privacy.
The ruling leaves thousands of cases pursued by the FGR, including those against former Pemex CEO Emilio Lozoya and ex-governors, hanging by a thread, the newspaper Milenio said.
The SCJN will sit again Monday to determine whether its decision will apply retroactively or only to future cases.
Some justices warned that depriving the FGR of its capacity to seek and obtain bank records will place money laundering, tax fraud and organized crime investigations at risk.
“The consequences that the establishment of this ruling might have concerns me,” said Jorge Mario Pardo Rebolledo.
Once the court’s ruling is formally pronounced, he said, financial evidence held by the FGR will “automatically” become “illegal – all the information, all the requests for bank information on which investigations are being processed.”
“. . . The Supreme Court must . . . be sensitive to the consequences of the judgements that it is establishing,” Pardo said.
Eduardo Medina Mora acknowledged that the right to privacy is of the utmost importance but argued that the right should be superseded when federal authorities are investigating crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, terrorism or organized crime.
However, six judges including Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea didn’t share his view.
“There is something that is very important – at least for me – to take into account. The seriousness of the crime, the seriousness of the situation doesn’t excuse non-compliance with the constitution. The fight against crime must respect the constitution and human rights,” Zaldívar said.
“. . .I don’t think that being more relaxed with constitutional requirements is the right path for a constitutional court or for a democratic constitutional system. . .”
Fortuna had its start when Morales, pictured, and four friends purchased this small brewing system.
In April of this year, 265 breweries from 14 countries entered their finest beers in the second Aro Rojo International Beer Contest held in Tampico on Mexico’s northeastern coast.
This year the prize for Mexico’s best brewery was awarded to Cervecería Artesanal Fortuna, located on the outskirts of Guadalajara, Jalisco. Two of Fortuna’s beers — in a tough competition with 1,200 others — ran away with gold medals.
By pure chance, Fortuna is located only seven kilometers from my door, so I decided to pay them a visit, first to taste their beer and secondly to see if I could discover just what has made them so successful.
I was born in Milwaukee, once famous for its beers. When I moved to Mexico, I happily found beers just as good as those in my old hometown and several much better.
Noche Buena and Negro Modelo were dark beers I especially appreciated, but for many years they were hard to find as the whole country was in the grip of a few powerful breweries that forbade the sale of competing beers in their territories.
The spice path through the beer garden is lined with plants like mint and rosemary.
I remember when — in all of western Mexico — the only place you could find Cerveza León was in the refrigerator of a meat packer who happened to be from Yucatán, where León is made, and who would occasionally drive a few six-packs on a 2,000-kilometer journey to his store in a country town outside Guadalajara.
Then a beer revolution took place. Microbreweries popped up here and there in Mexico, offering competition where there was none before. To my amazement, I was even able to find Mexican stouts that could give Guinness a good run for their money. From that point on, the number of microbreweries in Mexico began to grow exponentially and today there are around 800 of them.
Cervecería Fortuna is located at the edge of the huge Primavera Forest, a flora and fauna sanctuary popularly called “The Lung of Guadalajara.” Upon my arrival, I was greeted by Juan José Morales, director of the brewery and one of the four founders of Fortuna. I asked him how they got started.
“It all began during a trip to California,” Morales told me. “We tried an ale there that was simply out of this world. We were familiar with ale made by Mexican microbreweries, but what we found in California was far superior and we wondered why.”
Morales and friends investigated and came to the conclusion that the secret of making perfect ale was to use nothing but the four classic ingredients of beer: malt, hops, water and yeast, adding no preservatives. “On top of that,” added Morales, “we don’t pasteurize our beer. When you pasteurize, you lose 30% of your freshness and aroma. Instead we follow a very strict regimen for keeping it refrigerated, from the moment it’s bottled here at our plant until it’s poured into your glass. We aim to be the very best in Mexico for quality.”
Morales suggested I take their standard tour of the brewery and then come to him for answers to any questions I might have.
At the bar you can get Fortuna in bottles, cans and growlers.
The tour of the brewery lasted just over an hour. The place is gleaming and the equipment is ultra-modern, with LED screens flashing left and right. Nevertheless, the tour is very personalized, allowing you to smell, touch and taste the barley and hops and get a good look at every step that transforms them into the products that are eventually stored in a huge cold locker whose temperature is maintained at exactly 11 C.
Along the way, I met Fortuna’s braumeister, Marcelo Oehninger, who described himself as a “Swiss Chileno.” He is, I discovered later, one of very few brewmasters in Mexico fully trained and certified in Germany.
After my tour, I caught up with Juan José Morales in front of a wall covered with medals and awards many of which, I learned, Fortuna had won just in the last few weeks.
One of their top winners is Cañita, a beer they recently added to their line. “We wanted to make a lager beer,” Morales told me, “but we wanted it to be something really special. You won’t believe it, but it took us two years to find a formula that we really love.”
Cañita, you could say, is Fortuna’s answer to Corona, and, after tasting it, I think Corona had better watch out!
“But we also like to make really creative beers here,” Morales told me, “beers that no one else has ever made, beers with our own special Mexican ingredients. A few years ago I bought some sake yeast with the idea of actually trying to make sake here, but my brewmaster said that would introduce bacteria that would contaminate the factory. ‘Instead of that, how about making a beer?’ he suggested.
Fortuna’s latest award names it the Best Mexican Brewery of 2019.
“Okay, I said, let’s try. So we brought in rice, malt and Japanese hops and experimented and came out with a Mexican-Japanese beer we call Sake Ale and it’s creating quite a stir and starting to win awards. Now all the Japanese restaurants in Guadalajara are looking for it!”
Fortuna now has nine beers in their line and, yes, they are looking into even more “beers that no one else has ever made.” However, Juan José Morales observed that “Once you have a good product, next you must give your customers the very best service possible, so this has become our main focus.”
The Fortuna brewery also has a huge beer garden which can accommodate up to 200 people. The garden really is special. Huge Indian laurels provide shade for paths lined with aromatic plants like rosemary and mint.
At the bar I had a chance to try several of their craft beers. I was especially impressed by their IPA (India Pale Ale), which is brewed with an unusually large amount of hops, a formula developed by the British to preserve their beer during the long hot voyage from England to India.
I was amazed. I found this and several other of their ales delicious. I could taste different subtle flavors in each, which I might imagine came from spices, but I knew nothing had been added. I must mention that up to this moment I was not a fan of ales, but Fortuna’s have totally captivated me.
I guess I experienced just what the company’s four founding fathers felt when they tried craft ale in California and decided to bring it to Mexico.
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If you live in the Guadalajara area, you might want to visit Fortuna to take a tour or pick up a mix of their most popular beers. Check their web page for details.
Anywhere else in the country, you can taste their products by ordering them from Amazon México. And don’t forget: it’s not pasteurized, so the shelf life is only six months. Keep it nice and cold!
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.
Family outings on the household motorcycle are no longer permitted in Yucatán if any of the passengers are under the age of 5.
Lawmakers have approved a modification to the state’s traffic regulations that will effectively prohibit children under 5 to ride on motorcycles with their parents.
The modified law also states that older children will only be able to ride if they can hold on by themselves and reach the foot pegs.
The proponent of the law, Víctor Sánchez Roca, explained that it will provide greater safety and protect the lives of minors.
The overhaul of traffic regulations also means that all drivers’ license applicants must pass a driving test.
Next up on the agenda to improve road safety is a meeting next week to discuss three-wheeled motorcycle taxis, or mototaxis, which are illegal for safety reasons.
But their popularity has grown exponentially due to increasing demand and tolerance by authorities.
Ebrard, left, and López Obrador greet El Salvador's Bukele yesterday in Chiapas.
The federal government announced that it will provide a US $30-million grant to El Salvador for a reforestation program as part of a development plan that aims to improve economic and social conditions in Central America and slow migration to the United States.
President López Obrador and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele signed a cooperation agreement for the program in Tapachula, Chiapas, a city just north of the border with Guatemala through which tens of thousands of migrants have passed in recent months.
The reforestation project – which is based on the government’s domestic Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) program – intends to plant timber-yielding and fruit trees on 50,000 hectares of land in El Salvador and is expected to create 20,000 jobs.
“I’ve always maintained that the countryside is the most important factory in the country,” López Obrador said.
“Everything depends on getting that factory going and that’s what’s being done with this program. It will improve the environment, [create] production and work, and people, especially young people, won’t have the need to go elsewhere to make a living. Mexicans and Central Americans should be able to work and be happy where they were born, where their families, customs and cultures are. That can be achieved with this program.”
The president also said that similar programs are in the works for Honduras and Guatemala, the two other countries in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
High levels of violence and poverty have caused large numbers of people to flee the three countries, many of whom have arrived in Mexico as part of several large migrant caravans that have traveled through the country to the northern border since late last year.
Immigration control, López Obrador said, cannot come only through “the use of force, only coercive measures, closing borders, but through understanding the root of the problem and seeking solutions.”
The announcement of the development program comes as Mexico faces intense pressure from the United States to reduce migration through the country to the northern border.
On June 7, Mexico committed to enforcing stricter immigration policies as part of an agreement with the United States that ended President Donald Trump’s threat to impose escalating tariffs on all Mexican goods.
The effectiveness of Mexico’s anti-migration measures, including the deployment of the National Guard to the southern border, will be assessed by the United States in the third week of next month.
Would they stay home and plant trees instead?
If the measures are considered not to be achieving the desired results, Mexico will take “all necessary steps under domestic law” to implement a safe third country agreement, according to a “supplementary agreement” to the bilateral pact.
Despite the pressure from the United States, Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said that Mexico is providing the grant to El Salvador without any political or financial conditions.
He added that a Mexican team will go to El Salvador to launch the program as soon as Bukele wishes, explaining “the funds are available to start the program today.”
More than $100 million will eventually be allocated to the program, Ebrard said.
News of the tree-planting project was met with skepticism by Salvadoran migrants at the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance in Tapachula.
A 24-year-old man who crossed the border earlier this week told the Associated Press that “it’s very good that they’re providing work” but added that the program won’t work if it doesn’t put an end to violence.
“Even if there are [development] projects, people are going to keep leaving,” said Carlos Vindel, who fled El Salvador after gangs tried to recruit him.
President Bukele, who took office at the start of this month, has promised a crackdown on criminal gangs but according to Vindel, that will only make things “more critical.”
“There will be more violence because the gangs always respond,” he said.
Marisol Martínez, a Salvadoran woman who left El Salvador with her 13-year-old daughter and 14-year-old son due to gang threats said that “poverty is not going to change” as a result of the reforestation program.
In addition to the tree-planting endeavor, the Comprehensive Development Plan for Central American and southern Mexico proposes a range of infrastructure projects including a US $300-million regional electrical interconnection project, a 600-kilometer gas pipeline and a highway linking Guatemala to Tenosique, Tabasco.
Ebrard said last week that Mexico was confident that development in the region “really can [reduce] migration in the short and long term.”
However, in the meantime, the government is left with the dual challenge of stopping the flow of migrants and attending to those who are already here and those who will be returned to Mexico from the United States under an expansion of the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Mexico’s agreement to take in more asylum seekers as they await the outcome of their claims in the U.S. will place even more pressure on already overcrowded migrant shelters, a situation that has forced some migrants to sleep in parks or on the street.
As they wait for an opportunity to file visa requests in Tapachula, that’s the reality faced by Honduran woman Yesenia Hernández, her husband and their two children. But going home isn’t an option.
“If there were opportunities, work, hospitals and all that, we wouldn’t come,” Hernández said. “And if there was no violence.”
Federal Police officers who do not fulfill the physical requirements to join the National Guard are being transferred to the National Immigration Institute (INM) where they will help control illegal immigration.
At least 625 officers who were too heavy to join the new security force are manning INM checkpoints on Mexico’s northern and southern borders and along migrant routes.
After working with the INM for six months or however long the immigration emergency lasts, the officers will be able to decide whether to stay with the INM or try to join the National Guard again. However, if they decide not to work with the INM, the officers will be out of a job when the Federal Police is absorbed into the National Guard at the end of the month.
In an audio recording that was leaked to the newspaper El Universal, Federal Police commander Raúl Ávila Ibarra tries to convince a group of officers to join the INM, which he assures them pays better than the Federal Police.
“Those of us who are too heavy, we’ll have at least six months to make a plan that isn’t too hard, so we can fulfill the parameters they’ve given us,” he said. “Like a lot of you, I don’t fulfill the weight requirements, and it requires a commitment . . . it will be my personal decision if I want to continue or look for another option.”
One officer who was sent to work with the INM complained on social media about working conditions, saying that they were “tricked” into being sent to military bases along migrant routes where they are forced to sleep outside without adequate protection from the elements and possible aggression.
“After June 15, we were commissioned by the INM, but we were sent to military bases, and from there we are transported in open vehicles,” he wrote. “And we are vulnerable to everything, because we don’t carry guns or any weapons to defend ourselves from aggression.”
The anonymous officer said he would blame Federal Police Commander Benjamín Grajeda and secretary general Abraham Rodríguez Solís for anything that happened to the officers as a result of the conditions.
A study by the national statistics agency found that 79% of Mexico’s police suffered overweight or obesity to some degree in 2017.
