A few years ago I bought some tweezers at a chain pharmacy. Idly, I read the packaging and was surprised to note that they were made in Italy.
Since then, but not so idly, I’ve made an effort to note the country of manufacture of many of my purchases. The effort was not a negative one to avoid any specific country, but a positive one to ask, “Why couldn’t this be made in Mexico, or even Guatemala, where I live?”
The question is asked in the context of the urgent acclaimed need for job creation in those two countries that are the source of the bulk of would-be or actual irregular migrants to the United States.
A 2016 Bloomberg inside view of an Apple manufacturing facility in China stated that factory workers at that time averaged between $650 and $850 a month in “take-home pay.” At $750 a month, this would equal almost 150 times Mexico’s less than $5 a day minimum wage, and over twice the monthly salary of a teacher or police officer in Guatemala.
Although comparisons are difficult between countries, especially those with not easily comparable labor benefits and fluctuating exchange rates, it’s probable that the lines would extend around the proverbial block if a business were hiring at $750 a month in either Mexico or Guatemala, as examples.
So why aren’t my tweezers made in Mexico or Guatemala? And my cell phone? And my plumbing fixtures, etc. etc.etc.?
My answer is that they could be.
I recently overnighted in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violence-plagued states, dangerous enough to be absolutely off limits for personnel from many countries’ embassies.
While economists in ivory towers equivocated and politicians pondered how much money to allocate to addressing the migration issue, the inhabitants of a tiny tongue-twisting town in central Mexico have achieved unprecedented prosperity, put a brake on emigration, and set an example for the whole nation to emulate.
In 1937 a massive landslide buried key parts of Tlalpujahua, Michoacan’s principal gold mine, Mexico’s crusading and expropriating president Lázaro Cárdenas wielded his pen and made sure the mine would never reopen, and the outlook was bleak.
It’s 2019: the town of fewer than 5,000 is now the fifth largest producer in the world of its niche product, has prospered through exports from a weak peso, armored itself against future domestic downturns by emphasizing foreign sales and has successfully fought off an invasion of its home and foreign markets by inexpensive Chinese imitations.
It has achieved all of this while located in Michoacán, Mexico’s most notoriously cartel-dominated state.
The product is the prosaic Christmas tree ornament.
This op-ed is not about ornaments, but recognizing opportunity and acting on it.
Ebrard confirmed that he accepted Valero’s resignation and said the diplomat is currently undergoing neurological treatment for effects associated with the removal of a brain tumor in 2012.
Valero’s neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Ana Luis Sosa, said that although the tumor was removed, the loss of neural tissue and neurodegeneration associated with age have damaged cerebral tissue in the frontal lobe.
The damage has caused Valero to present atypical behavior such as kleptomania, the recurrent urge to steal without the motives of need or profit.
Valero’s monthly salary as ambassador was 234,000 pesos (US $12,160). The book he attempted to steal cost the equivalent of US $10.
The 76-year-old had showed other behavioral issues such as committing traffic infractions, managing his time poorly and having problems in his personal relationships.
During a long diplomatic career that began in 1970, Valero served as the ambassador to Chile from 2001 to 2004 and has taught political science and international relations at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) and other higher learning institutions.
A day for playing tricks evolved from this biblical tale.
There’s no need to wait until April to play a trick on someone: Mexico’s equivalent of April Fool’s Day is December 28.
Día de los Santos Inocentes (Day of the Holy Innocents) is a day for all kinds of practical jokes but beware of lending money. According to tradition, there is no obligation to pay back anything borrowed on this day.
The tradition is based on a tragic biblical story. According to the Gospel of St. Matthew, when King Herod was warned of the birth of the new king, the baby Jesus, he sent soldiers to kill all boys under the age of 2 to maintain a hold on his kingdom. The children killed on this day are known as the “Holy Innocents.” Jesus escaped the slaughter because his parents were warned by an angel and fled.
The date is set on December 28 in part because it is a few days after the celebration of Jesus’s birth.
But the concept of “a trick” comes into play because King Herod was fooled into believing that he had eliminated the threat, which he had not.
The concept of behaving in a naughty manner dates back to the Middle Ages in Europe, when there was a “festival of the crazies” between December 24 and 31. A blind eye was turned to many kinds of excess but the festival got out of hand in Spain, forcing King Phillip II to ban it. The celebration became a day associated with playing tricks and the practice of borrowing something to be returned on Candlemas, February 2.
Like other Spanish Catholic observances, this made its way to Mexico and has evolved in its own way. There is a phrase recited to those who have been fooled is “Inocente palomita que te dejaste engañar en este Día de los Inocentes, que en nadie debes confiar.” (Innocent dove, you let yourself be fooled on this Day of the Innocents, when nobody should be trusted.)
Today is a special day for Popocatépetl: it is the 25th anniversary of renewed activity at the volcano near Mexico City.
El Popo, as it is also called, is iconic of the Valley of México, along with the dormant volcano Iztaccíhuatl. Its name is from Náhuatl and means “smoking mountain.” Its partner, whose name translates to “white woman” or “sleeping woman,” is a long dormant volcano which resembles a woman sleeping on her back.
The two are important to the city’s identity although most days they are not visible due to pollution.
Popocatépetl is generally an active volcano, but it goes through cycles. It is the most active of Mexico’s volcanos, and with 25 million people living less than 100 kilometers from the crater, it is also one of the most potentially dangerous.
On December 21, 1994, the mountain woke up after 56 years of tranquility to blow ash on Puebla. The eruption caused alarm, especially on the volcano’s northeastern side, which received most of the ash fall and towns in that area were evacuated.
The event prompted Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center (Cenapred), with support from the United States National Geological Service, to install stations to monitor the volcano. Today, that monitoring goes on 24 hours per day, and webcams allow the public to view what is going on in real time. The monitoring allows for research and to identify any anomalies in the volcano’s activity.
Most of that activity has been the creation and destruction of domes inside the crater. Ash from different events has regularly reached Mexico City and Puebla, and has fallen in states as far away as Querétero and Veracruz. There have been some lava flows, including one that reached the nearest human settlement, Santiago Xalitzintla in Puebla.
The federal government has also implemented an alert and evacuation system called the Semáforo de Alerta Volcánica (Volcanic Alert Signal) depending on the volcano’s status. Green means that the volcano is not currently active and yellow has three phases which range from some signs of activity to persistent activity in the crater. Red (also called alarm) has two phases indicating activity outside the crater and immediate danger to the surrounding area.
Six patients at the Eloísa Angulo McLiberty Clinic in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, received the best Christmas present they could hope for — the chance to ring the clinic’s bell.
It’s not just any old bell: it’s a special ceremony for inpatients who have been declared free of cancer.
The six, aged 3 to 18, are the third group to perform the act, which came after some three years of treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia at the clinic, part of Chetumal General Hospital.
“Each one has a different story and we celebrate today that they have a happy ending,” said pediatric hematologist and clinic chief Asunción Encarnación Jiménez.
The declaration and ceremony mean that major treatment has ended. As the patients are from different parts of Quintana Roo this has often meant hardship for both patient and family. In one case, a child needed a transplant, which required a transfer to another hospital for eight months before the patient and family could return home.
A happy moment at the bell-ringing ceremony.
The day was special because it means a much more normal life from here on. The six will still need to have monthly checkups for the next 10 years to make sure the cancer has not returned, but the days of hospitalization, chemotherapy and other intensive treatment have ended.
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia is the most frequent cancer for children in Mexico, with a rate of 122 cases for every 100,000 children aged 14 and under. Although the overall five-year survival rate in developed countries is over 90%, it is only between 50 and 65% in Mexico. It is not known whether or how much ethnicity or differing standards of care contribute to the disparity. The average age for diagnosis is 7.6 years of age but it has been found in children under 2.
The clinic treats about 60 children under the age of 18 and has a 63% survival rate. It has reported lacking supplies, including medicines, but no child has gone without chemotherapy because other organizations such as Casa de Amistad and the DIF family services agency have stepped in to buy medicines from abroad.
In 2019, it received 20 new cases and saw four deaths. According to the head of the facility, most children do not die as a direct result of the cancer but rather through complications such as infections.
López Obrador and CEO chief Bartlett tour a geothermal plant Saturday in Michoacán.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has drawn up plans to limit private-sector participation in the energy market, according to a media report published Saturday.
The Financial Times said it has seen a CFE blueprint which includes measures that seek to increase the electricity transmission costs on which private companies have based their plans.
Energy experts told the newspaper that if the measures were implemented, they would immediately undermine the economic viability of some private-sector projects.
The Times said that companies producing electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar would be most affected.
Such companies – which produce about 6% of Mexico’s energy – are able to generate power at less than half the cost of plants that run on fossil fuels.
A former energy sector official said that if they are approved, the measures would eliminate energy investment incentives and “absolutely destroy the [electricity] market.”
The CFE didn’t respond to the Times’ request for comment.
The former official said “the main objective” of the measures “is to strengthen the CFE by weakening all features of the market and erasing the independence of [national grid operator] Cenace and [the regulator] CRE . . . regardless of the impact on consumers and costs.”
The ex-official explained that would include getting rid of contracts between private electricity generators and their customers, revoking existing permits and putting up barriers that make it harder for renewable energy companies to enter the market.
The plans are in keeping with President López Obrador’s vision of strengthening the CFE in order to consolidate the state’s dominant role in power generation. The president is an outspoken critic of the previous government’s energy reform, which opened up the electricity and petroleum markets to foreign and private companies.
The president said on Saturday that if foreign investors are not prepared to invest in electrical generation, the government will. He said the private sector currently has 44% of the market and the CFE 56% but the latter could increase its share.
Increased transmission costs could affect the viability of projects such as this solar plant in Coahuila.
“. . . we are going to compete, invest and supply [energy] because now we are prepared . . .”
If business doesn’t invest, López Obrador warned, “we could finish our six-year term with 60 or 70%.”
CFE director Manuel Bartlett said this month that increasing the state’s capacity to generate power was an issue of national security. He also said that part of his job is to “rescue the CFE,” which has debt of US $19 billion and saw its profits plummet 81% in the third quarter.
The measures in the CFE blueprint are the government’s latest attempt to renegotiate energy sector rules, the Times noted.
The CFE launched legal action earlier this year that sought to annul clauses in pipeline contracts it deemed economically unfavorable, while the Energy Secretariat (SE) announced last month that it had decided to grant clean energy credits to old, state-run renewable energy projects.
Six foreign and Mexican renewable energy companies have launched legal action against the Energy Secretariat’s rule change.
Experts told the Financial Times that the measures in the CFE plans would also trigger legal action if enacted.
The Business Coordinating Council, a powerful lobby group, has written to Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle to urge the government to “respect the contractual terms on which electricity supply that has already been contracted is based,” especially the transmission fees.
Experts have also dismissed claims by Bartlett that renewable energy is risky because the sources it relies on – wind and sunshine – are not always available.
The intermittence issue has been “more than overcome in advanced economies,” said a senior official in the renewables sector.
Limiting private investment in the energy sector will result in higher generation costs for the CFE, the unnamed official told the Times, adding that Bartlett’s focus on state energy production is “a dogmatic obsession.”
Verónica Irastorza, a former undersecretary of energy planning, said that “not using renewables to generate electricity cheaply for Mexican manufacturers is just letting a golden opportunity go by.”
Among the renewable projects that could be affected by the CFE measures are a huge solar farm run by Italian company Enel in Coahuila and Latin America’s largest wind farm in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca.
Parlez-vous français? Not yet, but instruction is coming.
Students in 34 secondary schools are going to study French in a pilot program supported by the French government.
Federal Education Secretary Esteban Moctezuma Barragán and French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian signed an agreement in Mexico City Thursday to collaborate on the program.
Moctezuma said the government will subsequently seek to extend French language instruction to hundreds of schools across Mexico.
The return of French to public schools “is great news for the country,” he said. “It will be a productive program that will have multiplying effects in the medium term . . . We’re taking an important step to strengthen the bilateral relationship on education.”
The education secretary said the government would like French teachers to attend courses at the Liceo Franco Mexicano (French-Mexican School), which he described as the most important school of its kind in Latin America.
Meanwhile, English language proficiency continues to decline in Mexico.
The 2019 English Proficiency Index compiled by the language training company EF Education First put Mexico in 64th place on the list of 100 countries.
And a study conducted five years ago found that 80% of preparatory school-aged students — their ages are 15 and 16 — had no understanding of English. The research, conducted by the education advocacy organization Mexicanos Primero, also found that 15% of English teachers couldn’t even speak the language.
The French foreign minister signed five other agreements on Thursday which will increase cooperation between the French government and the Mexican secretariats of Labor, Foreign Affairs and Public Administration (SFP).
Eight French companies have committed to participating in the government’s apprenticeship scheme known as “Youth Building the Future” and the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs will assist in the quest to stamp out government corruption.
Le Drian and Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard also signed an agreement in support of “effective multilateralism” to tackle international issues.
“A new page is being written in the bilateral relationship between France and Mexico . . .” Le Drian said.
For his part, Ebrard said that Mexico’s relationship with France “is important for several reasons.”
“The most obvious ones are due to history and the cultural, political and intellectual closeness between Mexico and France that dates back centuries and which has a lot of prospects in the future” he said.
“. . . All these [newly-signed] initiatives are very good for Mexico because we’re beginning a new stage [of cooperation] with France and the European Union. We’re very interested in Mexico occupying the place it should on the international stage and France is a strategic partner in that sense.”
Two of the 31,688 homicides recorded so far this year.
Homicides increased 7% in November compared to the same month last year, bringing the total number of murder victims in 2019 to almost 32,000.
There were 2,921 victims of intentional homicide last month, according to data from the National Public Security System (SNSP), making November the fourth most violent month of the year after June, July and August.
With 346 homicides, Guanajuato was the most violent state in the country in November followed by México state, Baja California, Chihuahua and Jalisco, all of which recorded more than 220 murders.
The same five states were the most violent in the first 11 months of the year in terms of sheer numbers, although Colima recorded the highest per capita murder rate.
In Guanajuato, where the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel are engaged in a turf war, 3,211 people were murdered between January and November.
With 2,657 homicides, Baja California was the second most violent state in the period followed by México state, Jalisco and Chihuahua, where 2,603, 2,465 and 2,379 people were murdered respectively.
The number of people murdered in the five states represents 42% of all homicide victims across the country in the first 11 months of 2019.
SNSP data shows that there were 31,688 homicide victims to the end of November, a 2.7% increase compared to the first 11 months of 2018, which was the most violent year in recent history.
There were 916 femicides in the same period, a 13% increase, while kidnappings rose 3.8% to 1,231 cases.
President López Obrador continues to blame previous governments for the rampant violence, and is especially critical of the administration of former president Felipe Calderón, who launched the so-called war on drugs in late 2006. More than 200,000 people have been murdered in the years since.
López Obrador has pledged that the government’s social programs, intended to address the root causes of violence, will help to pacify the country but crime statistics for this year indicate that any impact they have on reducing criminality is unlikely to come quickly.
However, López Obrador has remained adamant that responding to violence with more violence is not the right strategy and in November declined an offer from United States President Donald Trump to help combat Mexico’s notorious drug cartels.
The president said this week that he was certain his government will be able to guarantee security in Mexico, stressing once again that the root causes of violence are being attended to, impunity is no longer accepted and that the deployment of greater numbers of police and National Guard members is in the works.
Mexico has turned away from promoting renewable energy.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has now been in office for about one year. It’s a good time to review his policies, and in particular his approach to the energy sector.
The previous administration of Enrique Peña Nieto undertook significant energy sector reforms, which AMLO generally opposed at the time and during his campaign for president. Understanding those reforms and their significance is crucial to understanding the new policies of AMLO’s first year.
Oil production is an important part of the Mexican economy and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the national oil company, is considered a crown jewel of Mexico. But due to declining production in the super giant Cantarell field and persistent underinvestment, oil production has been declining since its peak in 2004 — today it is just over half the 2004 level.
The electricity sector also faced challenges: the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the state monopoly utility, had high prices, low renewables penetration despite terrific resources, and an aging grid infrastructure.
Former president Peña Nieto’s energy reforms had two main goals — bringing in competition and capital. Competition was intended to bring in new entrants and technologies, ultimately contributing to the Mexican economy and lowering energy costs for Mexican consumers. The industry needed capital to keep up with growing demand for oil, gas, and power and to replace oil and gas production from declining fields.
Energy sovereignty?
But the average Mexican didn’t necessarily understand or accept the reforms, especially for oil. It’s difficult to understand in the United States, but in Mexico, oil is seen as an important part of the national patrimony that belongs to all Mexicans. The day that the Mexican oil industry was nationalized in 1938 is still commemorated as a holiday, when patriotic Mexicans contributed from their own savings to buy out the international companies that had been operating there.
In a survey we conducted around Mexico before the 2018 election, a majority of respondents didn’t know about the oil production decline, meaning that the need for more investment was not obvious to the general public. Bringing foreign oil companies back into Mexico was thus a controversial move.
In his campaign, AMLO focused on a concept he called energy sovereignty — bringing the energy industry back under government control and decreasing imports. As a result, many of the changes that have happened in the last year are focused on “taking back Mexico’s energy” — returning it to its state-run structure, a questionable proposition with questionable results.
The changes are most drastic in oil. AMLO put a moratorium on auctions for oil exploration for at least three years, saying he wants to see results from the auctions that have already occurred. He’ll be waiting a while — it takes at least four to five years to go from exploration to production in a new area.
The fact that the earlier auctions aren’t yet delivering production shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. However, AMLO is honoring the contracts signed during the last administration.
Mexico has significant additional oil and gas potential, but Pemex doesn’t have the money or, in some cases, the expertise to develop them. Outside investment could bring expertise in the deepwater offshore and unconventional oil and gas resources like those in the southern United States. These resources are also present on the other side of the border, but U.S. producers are the best in the world at understanding and producing them.
AMLO is also very focused on the Mexican refining sector. Last year Mexico imported more than 70% of its refined fuels — gasoline, diesel and jet fuel — from the United States. AMLO commissioned a new refinery in Tabasco, his home state, and is focused on modernizing Mexico’s other refineries. Keeping more of the value-added from Mexico’s oil in the country seems like a good idea on its face, but refining is a high-capital, low-margin, relatively low-employment business.
Modernizing existing refineries might be a good investment, but building a new refinery from scratch when there is ample capacity right across the border is a questionable investment, especially when AMLO says Pemex can deliver it for US $8 billion in three years. When the project went out to bid to international companies, they came in at $10 to $12 billion and four to six years.
Additionally, retrenchment at CFE is harming investment in renewable energy. AMLO’s administration cancelled what would have been Mexico’s fourth clean energy auction, despite the fact that the previous three auctions were very successful, and unlike in oil, are already bringing results. The first three auctions yielded contracts for seven gigawatts of wind and solar capacity, and the average price in the last auction was just $0.021 per kilowatt-hour, among the lowest costs ever bid at that time in late 2017. It’s very doubtful that CFE would achieve these prices for new electricity without competition.
And instead of focusing on renewables, AMLO’s administration is focused on modernizing CFE’s existing generation and even building new coal. The head of the CFE has dismissed wind and solar as unreliable and expensive, and said: “We do not want to buy electricity, we want to generate electricity, it’s an aberration that we are forced to buy electricity from our competitors.”
AMLO and U.S. President Trump are both populists, although from different sides of the political spectrum. But their views on energy, and especially renewable energy, are somewhat similar. They both hark back to an earlier time, when energy security meant self-sufficiency and renewable power was outside the mainstream.
AMLO’s energy policies could be worse, but they are bad enough. He is holding Mexico back from creating a more modern energy system with lower prices for consumers and in terms of environmental and greenhouse gas emissions performance.
Visit ZonaMaco for newest and best work from Mexico and beyond.
Previous installments of Mexico News Daily’s mini-series on art in Mexico City have examined muralism and modernism in the nation’s capital. But there’s more: there is also captivating, inquisitive and confounding contemporary art on every corner.
First and foremost if you are an art aficionado who wants a look at the newest and best work from Mexico and beyond, the yearly pilgrimage to ZonaMaco is a must.
An international art fair that began in 2002, ZonaMaco is known as Latin America’s best and features artists known and unknown, big and small, near and far. It’s the luxury of sinking into some delectable art without all the hoighty-toightyness of the international art scene. Locals mingle with tourists, novices with experts.
Galleries all over the city participate in exhibits, conferences and cultural events during the fair’s two event times – the main fair in February and a supplementary one in September. In addition to the main contemporary art exhibits, there is also ZonaMaco Diseño, ZonaMaco Salón and ZonaMaco Foto, focused on design, antiques and photography. See the full schedule for 2020 on their website and book your tickets now – the city fills up quickly for this annual art smorgasbord.
If those dates won’t work or big art fairs are not your thing, we get it, but good contemporary art can be had at any time of the year in Mexico City if you know where to look.
Modern art at Kurimanzutto.
You might want to try starting at Tamayo Contemporary Art, founded by famous muralist and art collector Rufino Tamayo and his wife. While the museum’s permanent collection is a hodgepodge of various styles and eras, they run a dozen or more contemporary exhibits throughout the year that include everything from fluorescent light displays to ethnographical video to collage.
For some excellent photography exhibits, make the hike out to the Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos photo museum, whose stark, warehouse-like exhibition halls only serve to make the over-sized images pop and dazzle. A little more neighborly, the tiny Museo Experimental El Eco is located in Colonia San Rafael and despite its lesser fame, puts up truly great exhibits, each with printouts of information about the artist and art on display.
But maybe you aren’t just browsing but ready to buy: galleries galore await your critical eye and open wallet. Neighborhoods Roma and Condesa have become the gallery epicenter in the past few years and they are a great place to start, especially if you want to create your own gallery walking tour among the charming, tree-lined streets of these two beautiful barrios.
Heavy hitters include OMR and Proyectos Monclova, or you can visit Arroniz Arte Contemporanea, FIFI project, House of Gaga, MAIA Contemporary, Le Laboratoire and Licenciado. The most well-known and highly regarded gallery in the city is probably Kurimanzutto in the San Miguel Chapultepec neighborhood, and while you’re up that way you can stop at the RGR+ART and Parque Galería (and Luis Barragan’s House and Studio).
A few final favorites of mine include the Galería Hilario Galguera and Taller Lu’um in San Rafael. Taller Lu’um is particularly interesting as a fusion of contemporary designers working with traditional Mexican artisans to incorporate ancient techniques into modern designs. Proceeds help these artisans keep their traditions alive.
Keep in mind that most of these galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays and some require a previous appointment so always call ahead or check their website for info.
While great art abounds in many corners of Mexico, you won’t find the density and variety anywhere else that you will in the country’s capital. Paris, London and New York are fine, but great and exciting art can be had right here in Mexico City — with the added bonus of tacos afterwards.
