The popular port town of Progreso, Yucatán, has announced a marine project to draw more tourists.
Municipal tourism director Manuel Rosado unveiled a plan to install an artificial coral reef six kilometers offshore. He told the newspaper El Financiero that Progreso will officially present the project late this month or in early April.
“We are conducting environmental impact studies and planning the reef, for which we will need 5 million pesos (US $259,000), the amount required to fund this type of project.”
The reef will be made up of more than 1,400 circular structures designed by the Reef Ball Foundation. Reef Ball representative Javier Dajer said artificial reef structures are specially designed to promote marine plant growth and attract fish.
He explained that the structure’s circular design allows the sun’s rays to reach the reef at any angle, promoting photosynthesis. Additionally, the hollow interior pushes water out through the top with a whirlpool effect, generating sounds and movements attractive to marine wildlife. Dajer said the structures tend to become covered in coral within five years, fully blending into the ecosystem.
He added that the artificial reef structures are extremely durable, with an expected lifespan of 500 years. They are made entirely out of a special type of concrete that also contains additives to equalize pH levels with those of the seawater.
Dajer said the project is supported by diving schools and a local biologist.
“We are discussing implementing the project at three different depths with different focuses in mind: there will be a zone for snorkeling and swimming, a second zone for recreational fishing and boating, and a third zone for commercial fishing.”
Other artificial reefs have already been installed in Campeche, Quintana Roo, Colima, Baja California and Veracruz. To date, nearly 25,000 of the structures have been installed off the shores of Mexico.
The Mexico City Grand Prix may continue in 2020 after all but a missed deadline means the city may not be able to have the race coincide with Day of the Dead celebrations.
Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters yesterday that the federal government will put up 400 million pesos (US $20.7 million), half the amount required.
“The problem is that the Mexico City Grand Prix required a federal investment of 800 million pesos . . . today we have other priorities, but the possibility exists that we can carry it out with 400 million.”
Earlier this year, Sheinbaum declared that the 400 million pesos the Formula 1 event required was an “onerous” investment that would be better spent financing the Maya Train.
The mayor said alternative sources of funding will be sought to keep the city from losing a “great sporting event” through which the city “earns a lot in tourism” revenue.
“We’re looking for a sponsor,” she said.
The 2019 event is unaffected and and scheduled to take place October 24-27.
Liberty Media and Formula 1 Management, the international F1 organizers, had given their Mexican counterparts a February 28 deadline to confirm next year’s race, which for five years had been held to coincide with the Day of the Dead week. Both events drew visitors and tourists in a mutually beneficial relationship.
But the deadline having been missed, getting a preferential date is uncertain.
Fancy some lion for dinner? You can find it at the San Juan market.
“Hello, friend. What do you want to eat? Crocodile, lion, armadillo, iguana, ostrich?” runs the vendor mantra at the Mercado de San Juan in Colonia Centro. The framing and countertops of each stall are decorated with the heads of their prey – capybaras, tigers, kangaroos and buffalo – their flesh long since consumed.
A ragtag brass band walks slowly, hat out for tips, through the rainbows of fruits and vegetables, European cheeses and cured meats, dried insects, skinned rabbits and goats, mountains of obscure sauces, and an entire ocean of fish, crustaceans and bivalves.
Built in 1955 on the former space of the Buen Tono cigarette warehouse and officially titled Mercado de San Juan Ernesto Pugibet after the land’s former owner, the building is one of the oldest municipal markets in Mexico City, and its common name comes from the nearby San Juan Plaza, where food vendors sold their wares beginning in the early 1900s.
The market is renowned worldwide for its rare array of gastronomic delicacies: items uniquely Mexican and strange to the rest of the world and others seldom seen in Mexico, imported from distant locales. And then, of course, there are tiger steaks and lion burgers – among some of the scarcest of meats, raised legally on farms in Puebla and Guerrero.
Food tourists ogle, sniff and poke; their taste buds stoked, cameras cocked and ready, as they vacillate at countertops, anxious for the sensual experience of the virgin tongue.
The San Juan Ernesto Pugibet market has more than 350 vendors.
Martha Marín Marín, proprietor of La Sorpresa restaurant – staffed today with her daughter Jessica at the grill and son Aarón waiting tables – says it takes a special sort of interest to sample lions and tigers. They’re the strongest of the meats, and she doesn’t sell them much. They have to be cut into extremely thin slices and marinated in herbs and olive oil, then either grilled or pan seared in garlic olive oil to cut the overwhelming flavor.
Marín has owned La Sorpresa for 20 years but first started working at the market at the age of 12 when she would travel to the city on school breaks from Valle de Bravo to stay with her sister, who got her a job as a dishwasher.
“Tourists come from Sinaloa, Colombia, the U.S., China, Japan, Italy, all over,” Marín explains. “A lot come with guides who explain the food in their own language. The most popular we sell are crocodile, armadillo and wild boar. I try everything, but my favorites are venison, armadillo and wild boar.”
The latter doesn’t quite tick the exotic box. But an anteater in a shell, part rodent part rhinoceros, seems sufficiently weird. So I go with the armadillo, the “little weaponized one.”
A serving of armadillo, marinated and wrapped in plastic, comes out of the freezer and into a frying pan. Most of the exotic meats are frozen because they’re not selling dozens of armadillos a day. It’s served steaming hot, the meat stained red from the pepper marinade, with a distinct, smoky aroma that tingles the nose.
“Armadillo a los tres chiles” is marinated in guajillo, pasilla, and morita peppers and served with a side of rice and tortillas. It’s a small, round slab of the animal, cut from spine to belly with the carapace shell still intact.
Three-chile armadillo at La Sorpresa restaurant.
At first bite, I’m a little skittish to be peeling a mammal’s shell before slicing its flesh with my knife. Yet, after a single swallow holds, I can enjoy for taste alone. I realize the meat is more tender as I move toward the center, away from the carapace.
I see what appears to be a spine but no visible organs. It’s an interesting experience eating an animal cut all the way through from abdomen to back, as if sliced into pieces by a cartoon samurai. “I special order these cuts,” Marín explains. “They’re cut into medallions with a deli slicer. They have more meat and fat. When they’re cut into strips, there’s more bone.”
The flesh is lean and flavorful, with a slight, sweet liver taste but not too gamey, requiring a bit of knife work but not overly chewy – sort of like a porky rabbit. The peppers add a perfect saline and smoke flavor. “It can be made with more peppers,” Marín tells me, “but for me, this is the best combination.”
Marín talks like a woman that is used to this, like she’s been on TV. A documentary crew passes, panning the camera over stuffed animal heads. A man sits next to me and is served a simple consommé, while I request the provenance of my fried armadillo.
“I don’t know exactly where they come from,” Marín tells me. “I get them from different purveyors that work with farms throughout Mexico, but I don’t know what part of the country each animal is from.”
Jessica teases her brother out of boredom as he tries to get butts in seats for a bite of iguana. A tour of Americans passes learning about bugs. A well-behaved and manicured German family scans the vegetarian section with its mounds of mushrooms, blazing pink and yellow tropical fruits, unknown nuts and the mostly northern tree fruits and Asian vegetables that are often hard to find in Mexico.
You can eat the tails of the small scorpions, but it’s not recommended to eat the tails of the big ones.
The selection varies greatly depending on the season, with late fall among the most exciting for the wide variety of wild mushrooms coming in from the hinterlands. I tell a woman pushing persimmons that I’m a journalist and ask if I might be able to question her. She’s not at all interested, with a response that tells me she gets this request quite often.
Instead, she offers up her colleague, Claudia Barona of Rosse Gourmet, a gracious and eloquent host, well-versed in the historical significance of her offerings, many of which have been fundamental parts of the local diet for millenia.
She makes a clear point that, although they are a central ingredient to modern Mediterranean and European cuisines, tomatoes didn’t arrive in Spain and Italy until the 16th century.
I learn that tomatoes are thought to have first been cultivated by Mexican ancestors as early as 700 AD, originally as tomatillos, eventually growing into their sweeter, redder cousins that we we know as the modern tomato. In Mexican Spanish the word tomate is what we call “tomatillo” in English (coming from Nahuatl word tomātl, “swelling fruit” or “fat water”), while what Mexicans generally calljitomate is actually “tomato” in English (from Nahuatl xitomatl, loosely, “swelling fruit with a navel”). And Barona is delighted to point out that aguacate (avocado) is a Spanish bastardization of the Nahuatl word āhuacatl, meaning “testicle.”
For foreigners, she says, huitlacoche is one of her most frequent sales. Called the “Mexican truffle,” huitlacoche is a microfungus that grows within the cell walls of corn kernels to produce a blue-black powdery flesh, unlike mushrooms that are macrofungi and have their own multicellular fruiting structures.
Huitlacoche has a mild, semi-sweet, nutty, umami flavor – equal parts sweetcorn and mushroom – and is a common ingredient in quesadillas, tamales and scrambled eggs, turning to a dark black color when cooked.
Doña Martha Marín and her daughter Jessica at La Sorpresa.
“When mushrooms have a strong smell, it often means that they’re good and ready to eat,” Barona tells me. “But when huitlacoche starts to smell strong, it means it’s going bad and shouldn’t be eaten.”
Barona hands me a sample of a small tuber called papa de agua or oca that looks like a hard, bright red caterpillar and grows in shallow, slow-moving rivers and streams (hence, the name “water potato”). They’re common from Jalisco to Hidalgo and the mountains of Colombia and Peru, and are a traditional food source of the areas. They taste a bit like an apple, sweet and slightly acidic, usually eaten raw or roasted with poultry.
She points out the rábano arcoiris as a more popular delicacy among her Mexican clientele. Literally translated as “rainbow radish,” but more commonly known as “watermelon radish” in English due to its green skin with white flesh turning to dark red as it approaches the center. I recognize the watermelon radish as a common garnish among modern elite diners and their chic restaurants of choice.
As well as a popular destination for culinary tourists, San Juan Market is often mentioned as a favorite foraging spot for local chefs of international renown, so I assume Barona’s Rosse Gourmet would be frequented by the upper echelons of Mexico City culinarians. However, when I ask if “chefs” come to purchase from her she gives me a curt, “No” (a response that I understand to be a rejection of a word that, to her, denotes “white-jacketed, social-climbing snob”).
“Only tourists buy. They come with tours or by themselves to try new things,” she continues. (Or it could be that I am just one in a long line of foreign journalists obsessed with the circumstance and celebrity of 21st-century food culture and am simply cliché.)
At the far edge of the market hang pink muscled goats, lambs and deer, butchers working to free them of their internal organs. Gutted piglets lie together in rows, each one’s legs spooning its brother to the front, eyes closed, as if dozing the afternoon away.
Taking a break from skinning rabbits.
Fuzzy rabbit feet peek out from under towels, the rabbits appearing to be piled in a cuddle underneath, until the realization hits that, apart from the feet, they’re skinned bare.
Next come rows of insects laid out on plates: chocolate covered chicatana ants, scorpions in lollipops, dried beetles and cockroaches and piles of seasoned maguey worms and grasshoppers, most of which have been regular protein sources for millenia. Tourists squeal and wince as they munch on crunchy bugs and fat, gooey worms, the vendors egging them on for personal delight.
At the restaurant México en el Paladar, I talk to José Carlos Camacho who tells me that the grasshoppers are the most common at 80 pesos for 60 grams, while the “tarantula tasting with a salad accompaniment” is the priciest at 500 pesos. You can get 10 scorpions for 250. A taco filled with dozens of whole, tiny crayfish, called acociles, costs 45. And a serving of one of Mexico’s most treasured delicacies, the buttery, melt-in-your-mouth escamol (chicatana ant eggs), will set you back 200 pesos.
For those with an affinity for the European diet there are countless tapas stalls, deli cases filled with cheeses and pâtés and hanging dried sausages and hams, begging to be plucked from their hooks. Among the most visited is Tapas de San Juan, where meat and cheese tapas, or a baguette sandwich, will run from around 150 to 400 pesos. It seems expensive until you realize that you won’t be charged for any wine until you’ve reached at least the fourth glass.
Shared seating on plastic stools and pallet benches around a table spread of flavored oils, herbs, marmalades and salsas makes for a good excuse to meet new friends. The sandwiches are large and the wine is flowing, so come with friends or be prepared to make new ones.
I decide on a domestic foie gras that is quite good, despite the overabundance of aspic, the thick, congealed meat jelly that often surrounds a pâté. I pick at the delicate pieces, not quite hungry: a fussy little foodie, teasing foie gras around his plate.
I chat with a British woman, new to the city, who is out designing a food tour for English-speaking visitors. We exchange notes on the market, speaking from a polite distance, despite the loud prog and psychedelic rock coming from the speakers. I make a note to visit the domestic specialty wine and beer shop in the back corner, though I never make it. Our glasses are filled dutifully, and I realize it’s nearly closing time.
As San Juan Market begins to close, there’s a comforting rowdiness in the air. The patrons have drunk abundantly at the wine, beer and mezcal, and vendors pop open Modelos and Tecates while they squeegee and wipe. Piles of skin bits, fish heads and animal feet wait to be bagged up and sold elsewhere.
I ask a woman wiping down the a fish counter if I may ask her a few questions. She points to a gray, crotchety, old man, gesticulating wildly at a friendly-looking couple dressed in light, wicking travel gear. “That’s the guy you need to talk to. He does all the promotion,” she says with a smirk. “But right now he’s talking politics.”
The documentary crew passes, scanning close-ups of an icy pile of enormous shrimp. The fishes still present are beautiful, hulking specimens; only fresh raw seafood, no prepared foods in sight.
When he has finished chatting, I meet Sergio Martínez, who’s owned El Puerto de Santander fish stall for seven years. His family has been in the fish business for over 100, when his grandfather’s brother had bodegas in the city. He began working under him as a kid and has been selling at San Juan Market for 59 years straight.
He tells me the róbalo (sea bass) is the most popular and his personal favorite because you can prepare it however you want, and it’s always delicious. In ceviche, grilled or fried it will be good. “In general, Veracruz has the best seafood,” he tells me. “But the pulpo [octopus] is best from Campeche, and the best langosta [lobster] comes from the Gulf.”
I bring up the global popularity of the market. “Who are your clients?” I ask. “Is it locals, food tourists?”
“Tourists don’t buy,” he tells me. “People that buy from me come from a certain sector of society. The ones that like high quality. The cost is pretty high to produce and source good quality, and some don’t want to pay. If you want good quality, you have to pay.”
I mention the tapas, that they seem expensive until you account for the copious wine pours. “How much does good wine cost?” he asks. “That’s not good wine they’re serving.” He doesn’t care for the prepared foods. “It loses what it is to be a market,” he says.
“I saw the old generation. They made everything themselves. It’s symbolic what these so-called restaurants pay the government for their stalls. When the market started, they weren’t selling any prepared foods. It’s not hygienic to cook in the market. These aren’t real restaurants.”
I get on my highfalutin horse again and ask about Mexico City chefs. “Chef,” he says with crystal-clear disdain, shot point-blank. “There are great cooks that come to buy from me. Some work in restaurants. But chefs? There are more gastronomy schools than medical schools here in Mexico these days. They are afraid of math and chemistry, so they go to cooking school!”
• Mercado de San Juan is located at Calle Ernesto Pugibet 21, Colonia Centro, Mexico City; open Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 5:00pm.
This the first in a series exploring the numerous, diverse markets and tianguis (markets on wheels) of Mexico City.
The federal government has rejected the United States’ announcement that it will return asylum-seeking migrants to Mexico to await their immigration court hearings via a second border crossing.
The United States plan, formally called the Migrant Protection Protocols but initially dubbed “Remain in Mexico,” began earlier this year at the San Ysidro border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego, and will now extend to the crossing between Mexicali and Calexico, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said Monday.
The Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (SRE) said yesterday that “the Mexican government doesn’t agree with this unilateral measure implemented by the United States authorities.”
When the United States first announced in December that it would begin returning non-Mexican migrants to Mexico while their asylum claims were processed, the SRE said it would authorize for humanitarian reasons, and only temporarily, the entry of migrants from the United States.
It added that the returning migrants must have already been interviewed by U.S. authorities and given an appointment to appear before an immigration judge.
However, Foreign Affairs spokesman Roberto Velasco said at the time that there was no formal agreement between Mexico and the United States but rather that the “Remain in Mexico” plan was a “unilateral move” by the latter “that we have to respond to.”
Despite promising to only accept adult male asylum seekers, Mexico has also taken in returning women and children, The New York Times reported earlier this month.
Immigrant rights advocates have initiated legal action against the initiative, arguing that it forces migrants to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities where they are exposed to the same dangers they sought to escape from in their countries of origin.
United States immigration officials say that only 240 migrants have so far been returned to Mexico under the program, a small fraction of the 76,000 that crossed Mexico’s northern border last month.
“We are starting small to see how this process works,” a DHS official told reporters at a briefing. “Just to make sure that we have the coordination down with Mexico, and we have a process that works.”
The number now appears likely to increase, however. The SRE said migrants will begin arriving in Mexicali, Baja California, from Calexico, California, this week, while a report earlier this month said that the “Remain in Mexico” program could also be extended to the border crossing between Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.
The SRE added that Mexico has maintained contact with United States authorities to receive information about the people who will be returned to Mexico but only for “humanitarian reasons.”
“For the Mexican government, the primary purpose of contact . . . is to protect the human rights of affected migrants. This exchange of information does not in any way mean that the Mexican government agrees with the decisions and actions taken unilaterally by the government of the United States.”
Thousands of migrants, mainly from the northern triangle Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, have arrived at Mexico’s northern border in recent months as part of several large caravans.
President López Obrador, meanwhile, continues to publicly advocate for the implementation of a joint Mexico-United States development plan to address the causes of migration at their primary source – Central American countries.
More than 10,000 migrants were granted humanitarian visas in southern Mexico earlier this year that allow them to work in Mexico and access services for up to a year or alternatively travel to the United States’ southern border to seek asylum.
However, The New York Times said on March 1 that “Mexican officials are carrying out the Trump administration’s immigration agenda across wide stretches of the border, undercutting the Mexican government’s promises to defend migrants and support their search for a better life.”
The newspaper added that “Mexican authorities are blocking groups of migrants at border towns, refusing to allow them on to international bridges to apply for asylum in the United States, intercepting unaccompanied minors before they can reach American soil, and helping to manage lists of asylum seekers on behalf of the American authorities to limit the number of people crossing the border.”
The government’s decision to publicly reject the extension of the United States’ “Remain in Mexico” program but to accept the migrants for humanitarian reasons anyway appears to represent an escalation of what some officials have called a strategic decision by López Obrador not to anger Trump, with whom the president to date has maintained a diplomatic relationship.
One of many schools that sustained earthquake damage in 2017.
A México state construction company will be investigated for fraud after allegedly failing to pay 20 subcontractors for reconstruction work on earthquake-damaged schools in Oaxaca.
The Oaxaca attorney general’s office said that Grupo Salcedo was paid about 79 million pesos (US $4 million) to carry out repairs at schools in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region, which bore the brunt of the devastating 8.2-magnitude earthquake on September 7, 2017.
The subcontractors claim that everything was going well until November last year when Grupo Salcedo stopped paying them even though the work they were doing was between 70% and 90% complete.
“. . . We put our capital [into the projects] in order to deliver the work and to carry out our duty to the children of Oaxaca and now this company . . . that arrived on the isthmus and contracted us is refusing to pay us. It left and we don’t know anything,” said Carlos Vásquez Rasgado, an architect and builder in Juchitán.
According to the subcontractors, Grupo Salcedo promised to pay all outstanding debts by March 6.
The affected parties now claim that the Oaxaca Institute for Educational Infrastructure Construction (Iocifed) has contracted outside companies to complete the work but vow they won’t allow that to happen.
The subcontractors said they are prepared to blockade schools and highways in order to stop other companies from continuing the work they started.
Two political analysts have taken aim at President López Obrador, separately accusing him of pursuing improvised public policies “guided by ideological stubbornness,” and dismantling democracy.
Political scientist and columnist Denise Dresser told the newspaper El Financiero that the López Obrador-led administration is generating economic uncertainty with its seemingly ad-lib approach to policy formation.
“Uncertainty comes from public policies that are announced without evidence, that seem improvised, that seem guided by ideological stubbornness . . .” she said.
Dresser charged that it isn’t clear how successful some of the government’s biggest initiatives will be, referring specifically to the US $5.5-billion bailout of the state oil company, the Yucatán peninsula Maya Train project and the plan to convert the Santa Lucía Air Force Base for commercial aviation use.
“We don’t know what is going to happen with the supposed rescue of Pemex, if a responsible and balanced budget will be able to be maintained, if the Maya Train, Santa Lucía and [other] infrastructure projects are going to be Keynesian growth triggers or not, if the assessments of the rating agencies are going to have a bearing on investment and hence on growth,” she said.
“That’s what is generating this climate of uncertainty and we’re not going to do well if this continues for a long time because there are too many question marks with respect to future economic prospects,” Dresser added.
With regard to the Santa Lucía project, the analyst said “we don’t have a cost-benefit analysis [or] an environmental impact statement,” adding that it is unknown how long the airport is intended to operate and whether having three airports in simultaneous use is even possible.
As an alternative to the Mexico City International Airport – which López Obrador announced he was canceling even before he became president – the government is planning to rehabilitate the existing Mexico City airport and that in Toluca in addition to turning the México state air force base into a commercial airport.
Alexendre de Juniac, CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), said last month that operating three airports within close proximity to each other in Mexico City and México state will be “complex” and “challenging,” while Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú conceded that the government hasn’t yet provided detailed information about its plan at Santa Lucía.
Meanwhile, in an opinion piece published yesterday by Bloomberg, a senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York contended that López Obrador “is systematically concentrating power in an already strong executive.”
Shannon K. O’Neil wrote that from the beginning of his administration the president “has undermined democratic norms and checks and balances,” often choosing “to work outside the formal legislative process,” even though the coalition led by his Morena party has a majority in both houses of Congress.
López Obrador: creating a climate of uncertainty and undermining democractic norms?
She pointed to López Obrador’s “dubious public referendums,” his move to slash the salaries of judges and “take control of court officials’ evaluations and promotions” as well as his nominations of the “wife of a favored contractor and party loyalists” to the Supreme Court as evidence of the president’s undemocratic conduct.
O’Neil also said that AMLO, as the president is widely known, has attacked “the islands of independence within the government” by cutting the budgets of “the electoral institute, the transparency agency and many sectoral regulators.”
In addition, López Obrador and “his political allies are using the bully pulpit, congressional inquiries and the tax authority to go after commissioners who have dared to question his methods,” she contended.
As he has pursued what O’Neil describes as a “power grab,” López Obrador has maintained record approval ratings, with two recent polls showing that around 80% of Mexicans believe he is doing a good job as president.
That support gives AMLO “the domestic room to push forward” while “a decimated political opposition has yet to regroup,” the analyst said.
O’Neil argued that López Obrador is seeking to consolidate his power by sacrificing the previous government’s education reform “to gain the loyalty” of the CNTE teachers’ union and by “building a parallel labor confederation to challenge the Mexican Workers Confederation,” which has long supported Mexico’s once omnipotent political force, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Guaranteed prices for farmers and welfare handouts to the masses are also part of the president’s strategy to build his power base, the analyst contended, adding that “he’s even reached out to the military by handing over national security to a militarized national guard” and allowing the armed forces to generate their own revenue through the construction and operation of the Santa Lucía airport and other real estate.
“AMLO’s calculated strategy isn’t a new Mexican playbook,” O’Neil wrote.
“It harkens back to the PRI’s heyday, when the party maintained economic and political control of businesses, labor, the countryside and any semblance of civil society.”
She concluded by saying that in the end it will be money that will allow López Obrador to succeed or to fail and that access to the revenue he needs to shore up his political support could be hard to come by due to declining energy production and increasing government costs.
“Even with the destruction of democratic counterweights, vote-getting patronage networks require financial glue. With enough funds, he can solidify his growing political base for years to come. Without money his star will fade, as financial crises rarely treat even the most popular of politicians well.”
In red are areas where temperatures were forecast to reach 37 to 43 C.
Officials in Chiapas issued a red alert yesterday for six different regions as a heat wave brings extreme temperatures in the state.
The alert continued today for the Soconusco, Istmo-costa, Frailesca, De los llanos, Metropolitana and Valle Zoque regions, with forecast temperatures up to 43 C in some areas as well as a humidity level below 25%, triggering a wildfire warning as well.
Civil Protection called on residents to refrain from regular controlled fires, which could quickly get out of hand under the current conditions. Another six regions were on orange alert for temperatures expected to reach 36 C and two more were on yellow alert for temperatures climbing to 29 C.
According to official estimates, in the first months of 2019 Chiapas has seen 596 wildfires in 15 different municipalities, affecting more than 4,000 hectares. Those most most affected have been Emiliano Zapata and Arriaga.
Although a senior official in the Finance Secretariat said otherwise this morning, construction of the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Tabasco will not be postponed.
Undersecretary Arturo Herrera told the British newspaper the Financial Times that US $2.5 billion allocated to the project would instead be directed into Pemex as a fresh capital injection to boost production.
But a few hours later President López Obrador said the project will go ahead as planned.
He said the refinery represents an important part of the government’s agenda.
“There are no setbacks in the construction. Everything is going ahead smoothly and the refinery will be built. It will be finished in three years’ time as promised, and it will cost between $6 billion and $8 billion.”
The president reiterated that on March 18 the federal government will announce a tender for the project. The date is symbolic: it is the anniversary of the 1938 nationalization of the oil industry.
Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle confirmed later that refinery costs are included in the 2019 budget.
“This is a project that we need in this country, and not just as of now. Talks with Pemex, Conagua [the National Water Commission] and other organizations have been going on for a long time.”
Nahle said undersecretary Herrera’s earlier statements reflected adjustments that are being made to the budget “so that there’s enough money for everything, but the project is already under way and we are going ahead with it.”
She also said she expects Herrera will retract his comments.
Herrera also said this morning that the government is committed to its target of delivering a budget surplus equal to 1% of gross domestic product.
“If anything has to be adjusted,” he told the Times, “it won’t be the fiscal target.”
The mixed messages generated some uncertainty among analysts, many of whom already see the refinery project as a poor use of money.
Mexico City energy analyst Alejandra León at IHS Markit told Bloomberg “it sounds contradictory” and “there is no clarity on what the president has in mind.”
Energy trader Rajan Vig said “ultimately, no one communicates with one another” within the government team.
The mobile library that is currently traveling through Guerrero.
A couple of retired teachers from Guerrero have spent the last six months traveling through their state, but rather than hit the popular tourist destinations they are stopping at all the poorest communities.
Their goal: to deliver books.
María del Carmen García Estrada and José Hernández Salazar began their project six months ago by purchasing a Volkswagen Combi and converting it into a mobile library.
The next phase was collecting books. They bought 100 volumes, christened their bus Bibliocombi and hit the road, visiting preschools in the most marginalized communities in the state to promote reading habits among students.
The Bibliocombi collection grew to 165 titles after Ligia Tavera Fenollosa, a social studies researcher in Mexico City, learned about the couple’s project on Facebook and decided to donate 65 books.
Inside the traveling library.
García and Hernández say they have now had a positive impact on the lives of some 1,000 children. Their traveling library not only delivers books to those who need them the most, but gives storytelling sessions and offers activities that encourage readership, lending books and learning chess.
“We realized that the main problem for children, youths and young professionals is that they don’t have a reading habit,” Hernández said. “It is the main problem in the state and the country . . . that is what is behind this project.”
The couple’s goal is to visit all the municipalities in Guerrero and the rest of the country that are considered below the poverty line.
The Bibliocombi is funded solely by García and Hernández with no other support.
Central Americans are not the only migrants entering Mexico at the southern border: more than 500 Africans, Asians and Haitians have also arrived recently in Chiapas.
Migrants from the Congo, Cameroon, Angola, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Haiti crossed into Mexico from Guatemala in the final days of February and the first week of March, according to a report in the newspaper El Universal.
The migrants voluntarily reported their entry to immigration authorities and requested transit visas that will allow them to legally continue their journey to the United States’ southern border, where they plan to seek asylum.
As they wait for their visas to be processed, most migrants are staying at a National Immigration Institute (INM) facility in Tapachula, where some of them claim they have been discriminated against because of the color of their skin.
“[There’s] a lot of discrimination in Mexico, a lot of discrimination . . . The whites eat first and once a day we get the little that’s left over,” a group of migrants told El Universal.
They also said they have to sleep on the floor or in the bathroom area of the shelter and that they are involuntarily hosed down each morning with cold water.
In addition, the migrants claim that Central Americans staying at the same facility smoke cigarettes and marijuana inside the facilities.
However, some of the migrants – including pregnant women and children – say that they haven’t been allowed into the immigration facility and have instead been forced to sleep outside on a concrete floor.
Around 200 migrants from African countries and Haiti claim that they have also been prevented from requesting 20-day transit visas that will allow them to continue their journey north.
Without money to pay for alternative accommodation, the migrants are forced to wait in front of the facility in temperatures that can rise to as high as 40 C.
African migrants said they flew from their countries of origin to South America before continuing to Mexico’s southern border via Central America.
Many said they were attacked by criminals and police during their journeys and spent all their money on people smugglers, transportation, accommodation and food.
