The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has approved a project to restore a historic bridge in San Juan del Río, Querétaro.
El Puente de la Historia, or the Bridge of History, is a 110-meter-long bridge built in the early 1700s across the San Juan river.
It marks the entrance to the Bajío region of the country for northbound travelers and was also part of the 2,560-kilometer Camino Real de Tierra Adentro (Royal Road of the Interior Land), a trade route between Mexico City and San Juan Pueblo, New Mexico, from 1598 to 1882.
The Camino Real route was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2010 but the bridge has significant structural damage that is exacerbated by vehicular traffic.
Work to restore it will be carried out by the Querétaro Secretariat of Urban Development and Public Works.
Route of the Camino Real, between Mexico City and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The department’s chief said that authorities at all three levels of government have given the green light for the project.
“The project was approved and has permits from different federal authorities: INAH, the National Water Commission, the Secretariat of the Environment, [as well as] state authorities and the municipality of San Juan del Río . . .” Romy Rojas Garrido said.
To allow the extensive restoration work to occur, Rojas said, a new vehicle bridge will be built next to the existing one, explaining that it will allow the restoration and subsequent preservation of “one of the oldest and most important and monuments in the country” and also “provide a solution to San Juan del Río’s transportation problems.”
Land surrounding the bridge will be beautified and turned into public space.
The Camino Real route, including El Puente de la Historia, is one of 35 UNESCO World Heritage sites in Mexico.
Among the others are the historic centers of Mexico City, Puebla, Oaxaca, Morelia and Zacatecas, the Palenque, Teotihuacán and Chichén Itzá archaeological sites, the whale sanctuary of El Vizcaíno, the monarch butterfly biosphere reserve and the agave landscape and ancient industrial facilities of Tequila.
The ex-mayor in better days and his wife, now in custody.
The wife of a former mayor has been arrested after allegedly attempting to disconnect her husband from life support in a Durango hospital.
The state attorney general’s office said Nora Lucila, the wife of former Canatlán mayor Eugenio Rodríguez del Campo, was caught while disconnecting her husband’s oxygen and other tubes at a hospital in the city of Durango.
Her husband has been hospitalized since 2016 with Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The ex-mayor’s family had previously requested that Lucila be placed under special surveillance. She was accused of putting rat poison in her husband’s food over an extended period.
On another occasion, she reportedly attacked her husband in his hospital bed, leaving him with bruises and cuts.
Authorities said Lucila, 44, could face a charge of attempted homicide. Her husband was mayor of Canatlán from 2007 to 2010 and prior to that was the state director of urban development.
The central Mexico volcano Popocatépetl has been hogging the headlines recently, but experts warn that a second volcano also poses a high risk, this one in Chiapas.
Located in the northwestern part of the state, the Chichonal volcano lies in a mountainous region between the municipalities of Francisco León and Chapultenango.
It is just 75 kilometers from the cities of San Cristóbal de las Casas and Villahermosa, the capital of the neighboring state of Tabasco.
There was a major eruption of the volcano in 1982, which left a crater a kilometer across and more than 200 meters deep, and a lake of acidic water.
[wpgmza id=”177″]
Yesterday, the Civil Protection office announced that it will start reinforcing its security protocols in five municipalities surrounding Chichonal.
The agency said that given the possible eventuality of seismic and volcanic activity, the surveillance and monitoring of Chichonal should be a priority.
The agency announced that it will soon start to organize drills so citizens know what to do if there is an eruption.
Teachers affiliated with the dissident CNTE teachers’ union can now take time off for demonstrations and blockades — and get paid.
The previous federal government docked teachers’ salaries if they were absent from the classroom but President López Obrador said yesterday that teachers have the right to protest and earn their salary.
“No, no, no,” he said, “there will be no discounts to salaries; teachers have the right to protest . . .”
He pointed out that job action has not been an issue. “. . . in the time we’ve been in government there have been no frequent strikes, children have continued to have classes and there has been no major issue.”
The president stressed that “this is what democracy is like; when there are no more strikes it means that the political system is dead . . . there must be demonstrations, different points of view . . . this is democracy.”
López Obrador also explained that his administration is considering analyzing a rule that prohibits the payment of salaries to teachers assigned to positions in the union. At present they must be physically present in the classroom to get paid.
The policy was part of the 2013 educational reforms, “and we are for its complete cancellation, all of its policies.”
That’s what CNTE members are hoping as they begin another protest today outside the Chamber of Deputies. A spokesman said teachers will continue to protest until “not even a comma remains” of the education reform of 2013.
The union threatened to shut down the legislature as they did several times last month if their demands are not met.
Union leaders had announced that 40,000 teachers would march at today’s rally, but the newspaper Reforma said about 1,500 turned up.
Many migrants who arrived last fall were given food and shelter by communities en route. Support for the travelers has declined since.
After the arrival of more than 100,000 migrants in the past several months — 76,000 in February alone, a poll reveals that Mexicans might have had their fill.
Nearly 60% of respondents to a survey conducted by the newspaper El Universal said the presence of undocumented migrants was harmful for their communities, while 51% said that president López Obrador should prevent their entry into the country.
The negative perception of Central American migrants grew from 34.2% six months ago, when El Universal conducted a similar survey, to 58.2% this time around.
When migrants started arriving in caravans late last year, only 37% of respondents were opposed to the government granting them free entry. Today, that figure is 62%.
The percentage of Mexicans willing to offer shelter to the undocumented migrants in their homes dropped from 47% to 29%.
With regard to the threat by the United States that it will close its southern border if the flow of migrants is not halted, 49% believed the threat, and 44% did not, while 24% believed the president should confront the United States president.
A band of armed thieves stole US $2.4 million worth of United States and Canadian dollars in just three minutes at Guanajuato International Airport Wednesday night, more than double the amount initially reported.
Between six and eight masked men in a truck disguised with a fake Aeroméxico logo breached security to enter the runway area, where they intercepted an airport service vehicle that was in the process of delivering the cash to a waiting plane.
The money had arrived at the airport in a PanAmericano armored truck at around 8:00pm Wednesday in order to be sent to Mexico City.
The armed men stole 14 of 18 bags of cash from a sole unarmed PanAmericano guard and two airport employees traveling across the tarmac in a luggage transport vehicle.
The thieves then loaded the money into their truck, drove to the perimeter of the airport property and knocked over a fence to escape.
Airport operator Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacífico said in a statement that the thieves entered the airport, carried out the brazen heist and left within a period of three minutes.
Shortly after the incident, police found the truck that was used in the robbery and recovered two of the stolen bags of cash. They later found two more bags of cash in another abandoned vehicle.
Federal and state police as well as the army conducted a joint search operation but there have been no arrests.
Federal Police yesterday set up checkpoints to inspect vehicles entering and leaving the Guanajuato airport as part of wider measures to bolster security at the facility.
The 70 airplanes and helicopters that the federal government intends to sell will be on display at the 2019 Aerospace Fair from April 24-27 at the Santa Lucía air force base in México state.
Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval told a press conference today that personnel will be on hand to give detailed information about each aircraft.
“Those that are interested in buying these aircraft will be able to see for themselves their characteristics and the state they’re in.”
President López Obrador has predicted the aircraft sale will generate revenue of 10 billion pesos (US $524 million). Included in that total is the sale of the former presidential plane, a Boeing Dreamliner 787.
The fair, held every two years, is intended to encourage growth in the national aerospace industry. In 2017 it drew 471 exhibitors from 34 countries.
Canada will be the event’s guest country of honor.
The fair will be open from 9:00am to 5:00pm on each of the four days. An air show will be held on the fourth day between 10:00am and 2:00pm.
Phantom children? There are none, ex-officials claim.
Two former government officials have rejected the current federal administration’s finding that almost 100,000 “phantom children” are enrolled at daycare centers.
A Welfare Secretariat undersecretary announced this week that an audit detected that 97,000 nonexistent children were added to enrollment lists – allegedly so that daycare centers could access greater government funding.
But a director of the DIF family services agency during the previous federal government charged that the Welfare Secretariat hasn’t even carried out an audit of enrollments at daycare centers.
Laura Berrera Fortoul, now a federal deputy for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), told the newspaper El Financiero that the numbers are “made-up” and “false.”
She said that when she headed up the DIF during 2017 and 2018, neither that department nor the now-defunct Secretariat of Social Development (Sedesol) detected any irregularities at daycare centers.
The current government hasn’t presented any evidence to back up its “phantom children” claim, Berrera added, explaining that she has made several attempts to arrange a meeting with Welfare Secretary María Luisa Albores in order to review the audit results.
“. . . There’s been no response from the official [Albores] because such an audit doesn’t exist,” she said.
“If the accusations and reports of corruption networks at irregular and phony daycare centers . . . are real, put them in jail, punish them. But first, carry out a serious and real inspection, an investigation, a responsible audit and present the files before the relevant judicial authorities.”
The former chief of the federal government’s daycare center program, who resigned in February, also disputed the Welfare Secretariat’s audit findings.
Clara Torres Armendáriz said the use of the term “phantom children” was incorrect because in order for a daycare center to enroll a child, and subsequently receive a government subsidy for that child, it must register the boy or girl’s CURP identity number.
“You can put down a phantom name but if the child has a CURP number, he or she is not a phantom child. That’s not possible,” Torres said.
The former official added that if there were really 97,000 nonexistent children enrolled at daycare centers they would have already been detected by the Federal Auditor’s Office (ASF).
“It really concerns me that we’re ignoring institutions such as the ASF, and that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Secretariat of Welfare are refusing to be the guarantors of the rights of the country’s girls and boys,” Torres said.
Making raicilla at Rancho Nuevo: after heating the oven, the fire is extinguished and the piñas are thrown inside.
“Have you ever seen how they make raicilla, John?” asked my friend JP Mercado. Well, I had been told that raicilla was a kind of moonshine made in the mountains, but beyond that I knew nothing, so when JP offered to take me to a taberna (rustic distillery) where they make it, I signed up on the spot.
“And where is that taberna located?” I asked my friend.
“In a place called Rancho Nuevo, which is 70 kilometers east of Puerto Vallarta,” Mercado replied, but when he sent me the coordinates, I stared at my map of Jalisco in disbelief. Rancho Nuevo appeared to be situated right smack in the middle of a huge empty space — with no roads visible — identified only as Sierra Jolapa, a mountain range I had never heard of.
“Well, well,” I thought, “this already sounds interesting.”
Before heading for the taberna in the hills, I tried to learn what I could about raicilla.
JP Mercado with the Maximiliana agave.
I found out that the mezcal industry — according researchers Zizumbo and Colunga — was probably born in 1612 in the state of Colima when the conquistadores cut down all the coconut palms on the coast in an effort to eliminate the production of a distilled spirit called tuba or vino de cocos.
The thirsty population then turned to agaves. When the Spaniards eventually got around to taxing these spirits, local people came up with a tale to tell the tax collector: “We aren’t making our drink from the piña or agave heart (which was taxable) but from its root (raicilla)” — which, of course, is the very same thing.
Finally came the day for me to visit the raicilla taberna. Early one morning JP and his wife Ana picked me up. As we drove, Ana, who had grown up in that mysterious Sierra Jolapa, told me that while traveling around Mexico and the world, she would present new friends with a gift of raicilla, knowing they would surely never have heard of it.
“But everyone who tried it was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted and would want more.”
Eventually the owners of bars and hotels also began to ask the Mercados about this “vino del cerro” and they began to look into the question of permits and regulations that might allow the raicilla of Rancho Nuevo to be marketed commercially, as is tequila.
“Wait a minute!” I interjected. “Exactly what is the difference between raicilla and tequila?”
The distillery is nestled in the hills of the Sierra Jolapa.
JP told me I might as well add sotol, bacanora, tepemete and bingarrote to my list. All of these beverages, I found out, are distilled spirits made from the juice of a cooked agave, so all of them are mezcales (actually, this is incorrect. Sotol is made from a member of the asparagus family).
Tequila is made only from the blue agave, while raicilla can be made from any one of five agaves, and so on down the list.
To complicate things, territory comes into play here. The word tequila can only be used for blue agave spirits produced in Jalisco or parts of four other states. “The denomination of origin for raicilla was unclear up to very recently,” JP told me, “but now the product is protected and can only be made in Jalisco.
“Meanwhile, we have obtained federal, state and local permits to produce our own brand of raicilla, which is called La Reina, made only in Rancho Nuevo where we are now headed.”
From Guadalajara we drove west and then north, through ever higher hills covered with oaks and feathery pine trees, perhaps Lumholtz’s pine. Following steep, narrow dirt roads we skirted the edge of a deep valley bordered on the other side by gorgeous red cliffs.
At the end of a three-hour drive, we reached La Taberna de la Reina, situated alongside a brook bubbling with clear, clean, drinkable water.
Raicilla La Reina, “queen of mezcales.”
Here we were welcomed by the maestro of the taberna, Don Julio Topete Becerra, who carries on a tradition passed from father to son. Right from the spot where we stood, we could see every stage in the raicilla-making process.
The hillside above us was covered with Maximiliana agaves, which have very broad leaves. To my surprise and delight, I learned that these agaves come from seeds, not clones (as do tequila agaves), so the flowers are fertilized by bats, suggesting that every bottle of raicilla deserves a “bat-friendly” sticker.
After six to eight years, the agave is mature. Its pencas are removed (often with an axe) and the root is broken into several pieces. The next stage is cooking, which turned out a bit different from what I had seen at tequila distilleries.
The oven is made of adobe with walls half a meter thick. A hot fire is started inside the oven and allowed to burn for six hours. Once the oven walls are hot, the coals are pulled out with a long-handled rake and the chunks of piña are thrown inside. Immediately, the two openings of the oven are closed with big blocks of adobe and sealed tightly with clay.
So the agave root is not steamed or smoked, but dry-baked, giving raicilla its own distinctive taste.
The most unusual procedure in making raicilla is the one that comes next. The sweet, juicy mezcal is not run through a crusher or under a stone wheel. Instead, it is placed in a long, hollowed-out tree trunk (oak) and mashed by hand using heavy wooden pounders with long handles.
Intro - Raicilla La Reina
This is back-breaking work and if you visit the place, they will dare you to try doing it for just five minutes.
Once the canoe-shaped trough is filled with juice, the gooey, fibrous mixture is removed using buckets and poured into wooden barrels for fermentation.
The next stage, as in tequila-making, is distillation. This is easy to understand at La Reina, where you can see the final product dripping from the end of a long copper tube, most of which is coiled inside a barrel filled with water.
The final stage of production is aging. Don Julio dipped into a barrel and I got my first taste of properly made raicilla. What a surprise!
“This is really good!” I exclaimed. “It can hold its own against any tequila, in my book.”
“Now you can see why Ana’s friends were always pestering her for more,” said JP. “In these hills, they say, if tequila is king, raicilla is the queen.”
[soliloquy id="75623"]
If you would like to know more, or to visit the taberna in Rancho Nuevo, just leave a message at Raicilla La Reina. You’ll discover that both JP Mercado and his wife Ana speak excellent English.
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.
Trade and migration are separate issues, the federal economy secretary said yesterday in response to United States President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexican auto imports and close the U.S. border if Mexico doesn’t stop drug and migration flows into the country within a year.
“For the government of Mexico, keeping migration issues and trade issues separate is very important,” Graciela Márquez told a press conference.
“The United States government sometimes mixes the two issues but for us it’s very important to keep the ratification of the USMCA [United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement] in one lane and issues that have to do with migration in another,” she added.
The economy secretary said that any move by the United States to impose new tariffs would have to be discussed “within the terms of a relationship between trade partners that are modernizing a trade agreement.”
Former president Enrique Peña Nieto, Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed the USMCA deal in November but it won’t take effect until it has been ratified by the legislatures of all three countries.
Márquez’s position was supported by the director general of the World Trade Organization (WTO), who appeared alongside the economy secretary at yesterday’s press conference.
“[Trade and migration] are two different things. They are matters that are on the bilateral political agenda of Mexico and the United States, of course these matters will be discussed but from the perspective of the WTO, what we want is a minimum of turbulence, a minimum of ruptures in economic and trade relationships between countries and that’s what we’re working on,” Roberto Azevêdo said.
However, Trump said earlier this week that while “trading is very important . . . security is what is most important.”
This morning, he reiterated his tariff threat in a series of posts on Twitter in which he also said he was considering an additional economic penalty to deter the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico into the United States.
“. . . Mexico, for the first time in decades, is meaningfully apprehending illegals at their southern border, before the long march up to the U.S. This is great and the way it should be. The big flow will stop,” he wrote.
“However, if for any reason Mexico stops apprehending and bringing the illegals back to where they came from, the U.S. will be forced to tariff at 25% all cars made in Mexico and shipped over the border to us. If that doesn’t work, which it will, I will close the border,” Trump continued.
“This will supersede USMCA. Likewise I am looking at an economic penalty for the $500 billion in illegal drugs that are shipped and smuggled through Mexico and across our southern border. Over 100,000 Americans die each year, so many families destroyed!”
According to Kenneth Smith, a trade official who headed up Mexico’s technical negotiating team in trilateral talks with the United States and Canada last year, Trump’s tariff threats are nothing more than bluster that is politically motivated.
“[Trump] has no basis to argue that he can increase tariffs. Firstly, because if he increases them . . . he violates WTO rules, he violates the existing North American Free Trade Agreement,” he said.
Smith added that if Trump used Section 232 of the United States Trade Expansion Act to impose duties on cars on national security grounds – as he did with steel and aluminum last year – side letters that were agreed to during last year’s trade negotiations to protect Mexico and Canada from such tariffs would immediately take effect.
“. . . He would have to exclude us, there is no way to justify the imposition of a 232 measure,” he said.
