A young boy’s candid response to a reporter’s question touched some chords, with the result that one of his dreams — building a sandcastle on the beach — is about to come true.
Early this week a television reporter in Monterrey, Nuevo León, asked young Andrick what he liked to do most during vacations.
“I like to build sandcastles,” he answered, to which the reporter followed up with, “Have you gone to the beach?” “No,” the boy replied.
“How do you build sandcastles then?” the reporter continued.
“Only in my dreams.”
The 16-second clip was posted online and soon went viral, with commenters on social media half-jokingly wondering if they should chip in and send the young boy to the beach.
But others decided to do more than joke about the story.
Broadcaster Multimedios Televisión started organizing Andrick’s dream vacation by approaching possible donors.
Puerto Vallarta Tourism Trust director Javier Aranda Pedredero explained that the broadcaster contacted his organization after first talking to low-cost airline VivaAerobus.
The tourism organization then persuaded the Hacienda Buenaventura Hotel in Puerto Vallarta to join the initiative, which will include Andrick’s family.
Even getting to and from the airport has been taken care of: the car rental agency Avis will provide airport transportation.
The Tourism Trust said everything is now in place to welcome the young boy and his family so they can “enjoy our beautiful beaches.”
But the holiday might not end there.
Andrick has also been invited to travel to Zihuatanejo, Guerrero.
The international trade and investment agency ProMéxico, much reviled and then ordered shut down by the new federal government, was generous with its salaries.
Under the previous government, the promotional agency ProMéxico paid salaries as high as US $21,000 a month to its employees, freedom of information requests reveal.
A report published today in the newspaper Milenio said that a high-ranking official in Washington D.C. earned that amount while two others in London, England, and Switzerland were paid more than 19,000 euros (US $21,200 at today’s exchange rate).
Other generous salaries included 17,000 euros a month for a first secretary posted to Qatar, 200,000 pesos (US $10,500) for a manager of an overseas office, 130,000 pesos for a private secretary and 50,000 pesos for a chauffeur.
Personnel posted to 46 ProMéxico offices in 30 countries in North, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania also received generous benefits, including life insurance, holiday pay, annual bonuses, rent assistance and airline tickets.
ProMéxico also spent big during the administration of Enrique Peña Nieto to rent offices.
In six years, it paid more than 148.7 million pesos (US $7.85 million) to rent offices in 20 cities, Milenio said. Other ProMéxico offices operated out of Mexico’s embassies and consulates.
A public trust fund and a branch of the Secretariat of the Economy (SE), ProMéxico was created by former president Felipe Calderón in 2007.
Before he took office last December, President López Obrador pledged that the agency would be eliminated, taking the view that its offices generated significant expenses yet did nothing that couldn’t be achieved through traditional diplomacy.
Yesterday, he claimed that ProMéxico “doesn’t exist anymore” but the Milenio report said it is still operational.
A recent government human resources document seen by the newspaper says that public servants are still working in the agency’s overseas offices.
ProMéxico was allocated more than 914 million pesos (US $48.2 million) in this year’s budget.
Oil rigs are being frequently targeted by pirates.
Pirates attacked and plundered an oil rig last Sunday in the Gulf of Mexico, locking up the crew while they looked for loot.
Witnesses said at least six men armed with guns and knives boarded the rig at 9:30pm and proceeded directly to the third floor to wake up the crew. After locking up workers in the cafeteria, the thieves wandered freely, looting equipment, materials, money and anything of value they could carry.
The pirates departed at 4:00 am on Monday, when the rig’s captain sent an emergency alert to authorities. The navy responded 4 1/2 hours later. The crew and company lawyers have spent this week in interviews and taking inventory of damaged or stolen items, which have still not been fully identified.
It was not the first heist of this kind in the Gulf of Mexico, where pirate attacks are becoming a growing threat to oil rigs. On March 12, President López Obrador announced that the navy would maintain permanent operations off the coast of Dos Bocas, Tabasco, to protect against pirates that have in the past attacked Pemex oil rigs.
The rig that was targeted Sunday, called Fortius, is anchored several kilometers off the shore of Campeche. When fully staffed it has a total capacity of 150 people, but it is currently manned by a small maintenance team.
The owner, Mexican oilfield services firm Oro Negro, declared bankruptcy in September 2017, and is currently in the middle of a US $900-million negotiation with debtholders over the future of five oil rigs, including Fortius.
The first unit of the National Guard will begin operations today in Minatitlán, Veracruz, President López Obrador announced this morning.
The president reminded reporters at his daily press conference that National Guard units will eventually be deployed to 266 different regions in the country.
“We’re starting in Veracruz . . . the first [unit] that has been established with a sufficient number of elements, with a single command, will be in Minatitlán,” he said.
Other contingents of the new security force will begin operations in Salina Cruz, Oaxaca, and Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz, this weekend and by the middle of June, 51 units are expected to have been deployed.
“We reached an agreement that by the middle of June at the latest we’ll have 51 coordinations of the National Guard in operation . . . with 25,000 elements,” López Obrador said.
He cited the south of Veracruz, Cancún, Quintana Roo and Tijuana, Baja California, as locations where the force is urgently needed.
Accompanied by members of his security cabinet, the president traveled today to Minatitlán, where 14 people were killed last Friday during a family celebration at a bar.
López Obrador said this morning he would take the opportunity to express his condolences to the families of the victims as well as hold a public meeting with the city’s residents.
He explained that the meeting was originally intended as a forum for discussion on the government’s welfare programs but added that the agenda has been widened to include security.
“We’re going to give a response to the demand for security. The security cabinet will accompany me and a plan will be presented to protect the public within the framework of the operation of the National Guard,” López Obrador said.
The Minatitlán Chamber of Commerce said yesterday that 300 businesses closed in the city between 2015 and 2018 due to security concerns and that another 40 have shut this year.
In an interview with Milenio Television, state Public Security Secretary Hugo Gutiérrez shifted that blame to Comtelsat, the company responsible for installing and maintaining the cameras.
He said most of the cameras — not just in Minatitlán but the whole state — had failed and that the situation has “cost lives.”
Just 1,600 of 6,500 cameras are in working order, Gutiérrez said, adding that authorities have filed a complaint against Comtelsat with the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR).
As part of the investigations into Friday’s massacre, the secretary said that authorities have had to seek out footage recorded by cameras at homes and business to try to determine the route the perpetrators took to and from the crime scene.
“If our cameras were working, locating those people would be easier,” Gutiérrez said.
“. . . Because of this great fraud, lives have now been lost.”
The jealous tunnel builder after his rescue yesterday.
Overcome by jealousy, a Sonora man attempted to tunnel under his ex-wife’s property to spy on her but his plans went awry yesterday — he became stuck in the tunnel.
Police in Puerto Peñasco were called yesterday afternoon by Griselda Santillán, 58, who said she had been hearing strange noises behind her house during the past week, but had believed they were caused by cats.
But the noises became stranger yesterday, prompting Santillán and a neighbor to inspect her yard. They discovered the mouth of a tunnel and several knives and water bottles. Inside was her ex-husband, who had been trapped for some 24 hours and had been calling for help.
Emergency services personnel spent an arduous 45 minutes rescuing César Arnoldo Gómez Gómez, 50, Santillán’s husband of 14 years.
She told authorities that she had decided to leave him due to his jealous behavior, and had obtained a restraining order against him.
Gómez was hospitalized and treated for dehydration before being taken into custody for violating the restraining order.
Part of the massive bloom of sargassum that has been tracked with satellite imagery made landfall yesterday on the coast of Quintana Roo, depositing tonnes of the seaweed on beaches — and delivering a surprise for local law enforcement.
The seaweed began arriving early in the morning on beaches in Tulum and Playa del Carmen as was forecast by the Cancún-based sargassum monitoring network, based on data provided by the Optical Oceanography Laboratory at the University of Southern Florida.
Municipal workers in Solidaridad — where Playa del Carmen is located — used heavy machinery to remove the mounds of seaweed.
Children play in the seaweed yesterday in Playa del Carmen.
There were tourists on the beaches despite the presence of the seaweed, but tourism businesses in the region fear that the two-week-long Easter vacation could end on a negative note.
Among those tourists was a group in Playa del Carmen who made a call yesterday morning to the 911 emergency service to report the discovery of two mysterious packages wrapped in packing tape and tangled in the seaweed on the beach.
Federal Police officers arrived at the scene and found 4.9 kilograms of marijuana in the packages.
Workers on the roof. Inadvertently cutting an electrical wire cost a Miehle dishwasher.
As we entered the fourth week of our renovation project, it was time to lay out the new electrical plugs and switches.
This was also the time to sort through the existing electrical wiring, much of which looked like multi-colored worms having group sex. Of course, I know that living through a home remodeling project is like living in the wild; you do whatever is necessary to survive.
In keeping with that knowledge, I contacted the electrician I have so successfully used in the past. The first shock was to discover that he wanted way too much money to do the work we now needed. It seems he has been doing work for gringos who were willing to pay exorbitant rates just as long as it was less than “back home.”
So the search for another competent electrician began in earnest.
There is no shortage of men in our area who will look you in the eye and calmly claim to have the requisite skill set of an electrician. Years ago, I discovered that in Mazatlán anyone with a pair of pliers and a roll of tape would proudly claim the title.
Is it wiring or multi-colored worms having group sex?
The bright side is that a person who has not been electrocuted in the first few years of practicing his trade might hold a tenuous grip on electrical theory. After all, this is true Darwinism in action.
Here in Mazatlán the prudent rule of thumb is, rather than listening to a person’s claims of his own great competence, hire someone who has been recommended by a person whose judgment is disinterested, yet tempered by experience.
So we put the word out to our friends and acquaintances that we needed a seasoned electrician. As our list of possibilities dwindled to a couple of choices for various different reasons, including the lack of availability due to the building boom here, the next step was to visit an ongoing project to inspect the workmanship.
It was on one of these workmanship inspections that I encountered a practice so deceptively ludicrous I thought I had fallen down the rabbit hole. With a grin akin to that of the Cheshire cat, the electrician explained that he was replacing all the copper wire in the project we were viewing, not because it was believed to be troublesome in any way, but because it was over 10 years old.
He had convinced the homeowner that copper wire wears out over time and 10 years was the expected lifespan. And thus, all homes needed to have all the wiring replaced after 10 years, regardless of whether any inadequacies existed or not.
I was very tempted to ask the so-called electrician or the homeowner, “Will he come back in 10 years to replace it again?” How many people in the past had trusted this man for his expertise? I politely disengaged myself from this tea party before the mad hatter showed up.
A jumble of wires at the meter box.
Copper wire along with copper pipe are both coveted in this part of the world and either is quickly stolen when left lying about or unsecured. This shrewd electrician did not need to engage in any type of covert theft.
Not only was he being paid for completely unnecessary work, he had also devised a way by which an unsuspecting homeowner would freely hand over kilos of copper wire, believing it to be past its useful life. The beneficiary of this largess would then burn off the insulation and sell the copper to one of the metal recyclers.
As both the electrician search and the demolition work progressed, I discovered one of my peons had worked with an electrician for an undetermined amount of time. He had a vague concept of plugs, switches and lights, plus I had seen that he was capable of running power tools without inflicting serious injuries on himself or others. I made him my electrical helper, after I located my rusty pliers and roll of tape.
Since I had done both residential and commercial electrical work back in my dark and jaded past, I felt I could deal with a few switches and plugs as well as lights and a/c. I mean, how hard could it be?
When electrical work is done in the excessively regulated countries north of the border, it follows a standardized set of guidelines called the National Electrical Code (NEC). These guidelines are religiously pursued because electricity is the most dangerous element in most homes. Think about it — have you ever heard of someone being killed by their plumbing?
Anyway, one of the most important guidelines set forth in the NEC is the proper color coding of all electrical wiring i.e. green for ground, white for neutral, and anything black, red or blue carries line voltage and is hot. This knowledge alone keeps people in the English-speaking world from inadvertently getting zapped by a hot wire.
However, here in the land of tacos and tequila, the color coding of electrical wiring is what I like to call a la fiesta. In other words, a colorful jumble of disorganized wires which can hold exciting surprises for curious gringo intruders.
Another frightening aspect of Mexican wiring is its ability to change color from one point to another. For example, a black wire will leave the breaker panel and run through its conduit to reappear in an outlet box which has all the colors except black. This means the wire has been spliced somewhere in route to the outlet box; this is not a good practice.
The propensity to attach two or three wires to a single breaker is also a common aspect of Mexican wiring. And the list goes on ad infinitum, but you get the idea. Fortunately all the homes in our area of Mexico’s west coast are constructed with bricks, mortar and reinforced concrete. If homes here were built from flammable materials, our entire town would have burned to the ground years ago.
Mexican electrical is not quite as dangerous as dropping a toaster in your bath water, but there can be similar moments. Several days ago I went into our kitchen, one of the few undisturbed rooms of our home, and smelled burning electrical wires.
I immediately killed the power in the panel for that end of the house and broke out my test meter. Of the two legs of single-phase power which feeds the panel, one leg bounced between 268 and 210 volts and the other leg fluctuated between 20 and 70 volts. I had never seen anything remotely like this before, ever.
It seems the demolition crew, on the roof at that time, severed the neutral line from the CFE (the Mexican power company). This caused the power to jump back and forth between the two main feed lines and the line with the highest voltage just happened to be the one which sent power to the kitchen. The fridge and the coffee maker survived, but the blender, microwave and The Captured Tourist Woman’s Miele dishwasher did not.
This incident brought home a reminder that the direct costs of construction in Mexico can be roughly calculated, but the indirect costs can suck pesos like a black hole.
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].
Migrants ride north aboard the freight train called The Beast.
Approximately 1,300 migrants fled a detention center in Tapachula, Chiapas, last night but 700 were later detained and returned to the facility.
The National Immigration Institute (INM) said in a statement that shortly after 8:00pm “there was a large-scale unauthorized departure of people housed at the Siglo XXI migration station.”
Most of the migrants who made the getaway were Cubans, the INM added, explaining that they currently make up the majority of people being held at the center.
The statement said there was no confrontation between INM personnel and the migrants because the former have no “containment equipment.”
The newspaper El Universal said the migrants escaped while many INM agents and Federal Police officers were not at the detention center because they were transferring another group of foreigners to the facility.
They fled because they expected to be deported, the newspaper said. Some of them were among 367 migrants who were detained Monday in Pijijiapan.
After leaving the immigration facility, some of the migrants fled on foot on a highway that leads to the center of Tapachula, while others boarded public transportation.
As of last night, approximately 600 people had not been located, the INM said.
Cubans migrants said that since yesterday morning there had been disputes at the overcrowded detention center over personal space and the limited number of mattresses.
Farther north in Chiapas, around 600 migrants left the town of Arriaga yesterday on a freight train that is known colloquially as “La Bestia” (The Beast). The group was expected to arrive today in Ixtepec, Oaxaca.
There are still around 5,000 migrants in Chiapas, mainly in the towns of Tonalá, Pijijiapan, Tapachula and Mapastepec.
Young migrants wait for train to leave Arriaga, Chiapas, and take them north.
It has become increasingly difficult for migrants to avoid Federal Police and IMN operations, which force them to register their entry into Mexico.
Sources familiar with Mexican immigration policy said last week that near-daily pressure from the United States government had resulted in the secretariats of the Interior (Segob) and Foreign Affairs (SRE) pushing the INM to adopt a tougher approach towards migrants.
The government issued about 13,000 humanitarian visas to migrants that entered Mexico at the southern border in January but authorities have largely discontinued the initiative.
Some migrants have been issued 20-day transit visas that allow them to continue their journey to the northern border but others have only received permission to remain in the south of the country.
Two large groups of migrants – 204 from Honduras and 148 from Cuba – were deported last week after they were located traveling through the country without having first regularized their immigration status.
Support for those traveling along the well-trodden migrant route in southern Mexico has declined considerably compared to late last year when municipal governments, church groups and residents routinely provided food and shelter.
“People don’t support us, they don’t even give us water. Help in the shelters has been reduced, we feed ourselves with mangos and other fruit we get during the journey,” said José Antonio, a Honduran migrant who intended to hop on La Bestia.
Despite the dangers of riding atop a freight train, José Antonio believes that it represents his only hope of leaving Chiapas to continue the journey towards the United States.
“It’s the best option amid the trap set by the government.”
Labor Secretary Luis María Alcalde and Conasami chief Peñaloza at his swearing in ceremony in December.
The federal government will set a minimum wage for domestic workers next month, said National Minimum Wage Commission (Conasami) president Andrés Peñaloza.
Of the more than 2.3 million people who work as domestic employees in Mexico, the commission expects 950,000 will benefit directly from the requirement.
“We cannot ignore that there are 950,000 domestic workers that make less than the minimum wage . . . We are talking about a direct positive impact on the [their] lives . . .”
The commission president suggested that the minimum wage should be a “well-balanced” amount so as not to be so high as to stifle new employment, and at the same time create formal work arrangements that benefit employees.
Suggestions for the minimum wage level range from the current national minimum wage of 102.68 pesos daily (US $5.40) to 300 pesos (US $15.80), proposed by labor unions and other organizations.
“This will be the first step towards settling a historic debt not only with this sector, but with all workers that have lost all purchasing power for decades on end,” Peñaloza said, staking out the commission’s new position on the issue after years of holding down wage increases.
The commission estimates that of the 1.3 million households that employ domestic workers, 67% pay employees more than seven times the national minimum wage.
“These households are paying 250, 300, 500 or even 700 pesos a day. Even with a set minimum wage, there is no reason that they should not continue to pay that amount; what we want is to promote formalization with a contract.”
He added that despite a new labor law recently approved by the Senate that states that domestic employees should not earn less than double the national minimum wage, or 205.38 pesos daily, the final decision on the matter belongs to Conasami according to the constitution.
According to the newspaper El Sol de México, the vast majority of domestic employees are women, more than 98% of whom do not have access to basic health care. Thirty-six percent begin their employment while still minors, and 96% carry out their duties without any formal contract or guarantee of salary or benefits.
Peñaloza was named head of Conasami in December by Labor Secretary Luisa María Alcalde, who said at the time that “change is in the air” for the commission. Peñaloza replaced Basilio González, who had held the post for 27 years.
“We will work together toward a new policy to restore the minimum wage,” Alcalde said.
View from on high of El Salto del Nogal, near Tapalpa, Jalisco. Combiajando
In the highlands of western Mexico, April and May are, without a doubt, the hottest months of the entire year.
Because those who live here normally enjoy one of the best climates planet Earth has to offer, few people bother to install air conditioning in their homes, opting instead to aguantar or suffer patiently until the last day of May, knowing that in June the ancient god of water, Tlaloc, will surely bring the first showers of the rainy season, immediately cooling the air and restoring those perfect temperatures to which they are accustomed.
Meanwhile, whenever the opportunity arises, the people of western Mexico, especially those who live in Guadalajara, escape the heat by heading either to the beach or to the mountains. Here, let’s take a look at their favorite choice of mountain towns, Tapalpa.
Tapalpa is located 90 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara and its elevation is about 2,000 meters above sea level. Because it is well over a mile high, it has a cool climate and because it’s a Pueblo Mágico it also has a cool look: steep and narrow cobblestone streets, whitewashed buildings with red-tile roofs, and picturesque wooden balconies.
Visiting Tapalpa means strolling through these little streets without a care in the world, deeply breathing the cool, crisp, clean air and thus awakening an appetite for the pueblo’s most famous dish, borrego al pastor: lamb marinated in spices and grilled on a spike, “shepherd style.”
Shops in Tapalpa.
When night falls, you can relax in front of a crackling fireplace with a flavorful ponche de granada, grenadine punch made with tequila or mezcal, eventually collapsing into bed and sleeping like a lion.
In the early 1500s, the Spaniards arrived in this area and found an indigenous settlement “about three leagues” from the present-day location of Tapalpa. These people, called Atlaccos, put up no resistance to the conquerors, who started a colony between 1531 and 1532.
It was, however, only in 1825 that the population was big enough to be called a pueblo. Even today there are only about 5,500 people living in the town which, by the way, was declared a Pueblo Mágico in 2011.
Only a 15-minute drive north of Tapalpa lie Las Piedrotas, the “Great Big Rocks,” huddled in clusters like enormous dinosaur eggs in a wide meadow with no other such rocks in sight. A barbed-wire fence forces visitors to park on the roadside and pass through a caracol — the rural equivalent of a turnstyle — to wander about among those massive monoliths.
Well, to tell you the truth, those Piedrotas are actually mere pebbles in comparison with another rock called La Piedra Gorda, The Fat Rock, a monolith located only four kilometers from town, but a bit difficult to reach, although the view from its peak is well worth the effort.
The last time I visited the Piedra Gorda was with friends who planned to install a bolt in the rock to which visitors could attach a safety line while peering over the edge of a sheer drop of some 50 meters.
Las Piedrotas. Note small figure between the rocks.
We drove northwest out of Tapalpa to the DIF (Family Development Center) and parked. Here the altitude is about 2,090 meters above sea level. We crossed a stream by leaping from rock to rock and then walked along a rough brecha (dirt road) which is closed to vehicles (except those of people living in the area).
Eventually we crossed a charming meadow filled with wildflowers. Since Tapalpa has a strange tradition in which people throw Santa María flowers at one another on Mexican Independence Day, we waged a few battles of our own before continuing uphill to La Piedra Gorda, which is nestled among a few smaller rocks.
There’s a sort of ladder here to help you get up to the top of the rock where you suddenly come upon a magnificent, eye-popping view. It’s Mother Nature making IMAX look like a postage stamp, from an altitude of about 2,400 meters above sea level (7,874 feet).
This hike is 4.5 kilometers one way and took us about 90 minutes, strolling along at a leisurely pace.
Anyone who visits Tapalpa will soon hear about “a wonderful waterfall over 100 meters high.”
This is El Salto del Nogal, the Walnut Cascade, and it is most certainly worth visiting if you are in good physical condition.
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The drive from Tapalpa takes just a little over half an hour and the hike down to the waterfall about the same amount of time. Just how long you will need to get back up, of course, depends on what kind of shape you are in.
The trail takes you across a bubbling brook, through several stone walls and then you are on your way down, down, down into a deep canyon.
At a certain point you’ll see some shallow shelter caves in the cliff to your left. This spot, I am told, is called The Convent and they say several Cristeros hid there during the Cristero War (1926–29) when the Mexican government tried to eliminate the power of the Catholic Church.
During most of your descent you’ll hear the roar of the mighty waterfall but you won’t be able to see it until you reach the very bottom, where there is a large pool of water dotted with huge boulders and dwarfed by the majestic foaming white ribbon linking the pool to a patch of blue sky far above.
Unfortunately, the icy water temperature plus a powerful wind generated by the falls make it difficult to swim in this pool but there is a smaller, windless waterfall with its own “perfect pool” for swimming just a little further downstream.
To reach the trail to the waterfall, ask Google Maps to take you to “Cascada el Salto del Nogal, Tapalpa.”
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What else is there to do in the vicinity of this magical town?
Actually, there is so much that I plan to continue this description next week, so if you are thinking of visiting the Sierra de Tapalpa, you’d better allow several days, so you can have a good look around.
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.
