The Coahuila Wines brand, a project involving 22 partners in the wine industry, has won a Gourmet Excellence 2018 award at the International Tourism Fair in Spain.
The award was given in recognition of the Coahuila Wine Association’s creation of the brand, which has seen enormous growth since its beginning in 2014.
The area of land devoted to growing grapes has grown from 400 to 1,000 hectares and the number of wines has grown from 30 to 100 different offerings of red, white, and rosé wines that have won 29 national and international awards in the four years since the brand’s creation.
In 2017, Coahuila Wines produced more than four million bottles, 8.5% of national production.
The brand’s partner companies employ more than 1,500 families in the region, which has also seen an increase in tourism.
The state government provided support to the brand with publicity such as a special edition by Mexico Desconocido magazine along with a video that can still be found on the magazine’s website.
Coahuila faced stiff competition from countries all over the world with 50 different projects nominated in the innovative gastronomical projects category. Coahuila Wines was among the top 10 selected.
The prize was created in 2005 by the international communications conglomerate Excellence Group to promote excellence in markets associated with tourism and culture in the Ibero-American world.
The federal government will implement a program aimed at recovering as many as 4 million abandoned houses, most of which are located in the north of the country.
Agrarian Development and Urban Planning Secretary Román Meyer Falcón told the newspaper El Universal that the secretariat he heads will soon present a national “recovery program” to President López Obrador and Infonavit, the National Workers’ Housing Fund.
“[The homes] will have to be examined project by project. There will be some that we can rebuild, intervene in, offer better land use permits for, [convert into] public spaces . . .” he said.
“Our obligation is to lay the groundwork so that this housing policy doesn’t happen again. We can’t allow there to be this great volume of millions of abandoned houses,” Meyer added.
The secretary said the states with the highest numbers of abandoned homes are all in the north of the country, specifically Nuevo León, Tamaulipas, Baja California and Chihuahua.
He explained that the presence of organized crime was one factor that led families to abandon their homes in the north but added that there are a high number of migrants from southern states, such as Oaxaca, who travel to the border states to work in maquiladoras, or factories, before moving on.
“. . . There is a constant turnover of people,” Meyer said.
“[There are] approximately 4 million homes that are abandoned or in disuse at a national level, 4 or 5 million properties that we have to think about; in what way are we going to intervene and what will be Infonavit’s policy,” he said.
Turning to other topics, Meyer said that when he took over the reins of the secretariat, called Sedatu for short, the department wasn’t in the “best condition.”
“We were met with a secretariat that didn’t have internet, didn’t have servers, didn’t have telephones . . .” he said, adding that there was a possibility that Sedatu would relocate to Pachuca, Hidalgo, in 2020.
The secretary previously responsible for the department was Rosario Robles, who has been accused of corruption, but Meyer ruled out any possibility that Sedatu would investigate her.
“We’re not the relevant authority to carry out the investigation,” he said.
With regard to earthquake reconstruction, Meyer said that Sedatu is currently carrying out a census to determine where additional funding needs to be deployed and to follow up on how money already allocated has been used.
“We’re going to do an analysis home by home, with a much more efficient mechanism . . . In the previous administration, there wasn’t a follow-up on the delivery of resources . . . We believe that the obligation [of the government] is not just to deliver the resources but to make sure that each family made good use of them,” he said.
The largest engraving on the wall of petroglyphs — 500 years of breaking news.
Many years ago I heard rumors that there was a large and curious cave somewhere near the little town of Casimiro Castillo, about 50 kilometers inland from the Pacific port of Barra de Navidad.
“Inside that cave is a spiral staircase that takes you down to an underground river,” we had been assured, but reaching the place from Guadalajara would require us to drive all day along narrow, winding, Highway 80.
Still, we felt it would be worth it and indeed, the moment we reached Casimiro Castillo and turned off the highway, we immediately stumbled upon something extraordinary.
A dirt road led us to the foot of a sheer wall of pure marble. Even from afar, we could see that the wall was covered with petroglyphs. There were the usual spirals, of course, but there were also many recognizable depictions of dogs, frogs, arrows and suns and, most remarkable of all, there was a human figure at least a meter tall, dressed most curiously in baggy pants and wearing something resembling a helmet topped with something resembling a feather.
These engravings, an archaeologist suggested, were probably made between 700 and 1020 AD and were used as a kind of bulletin board where something new was added every year for some important festival: 500 years of breaking news, still there for all of us to see.
The cool pool at Balneario Agua Caliente.
This hill, we soon discovered, was only one of seven marble mountains in the area. Since marble is a kind of limestone, we were convinced it would only be a matter of time before we located the Cave of the Winding Staircase.
This conviction was strengthened when local people told us that they did indeed know of a big cave in the area. We followed their instructions and came to a small lake fed by a warm spring, a perfect place for camping. They called this La Laguna del Altilte and just above it we found the entrance to the cave they had told us about.
We ducked through a low but wide opening and gingerly walked down a slope into a truly amazing cavern. While the outside surface of the marble hill was weathered and grey, here, inside the cave, we could see its true colors on the smooth, wet, undulating walls. Just watching water drip from a multicolored stalactite was a pleasure.
Although we found no sign of a circular staircase in this cave, we did discover a big balcony with an upper passage leading who knew where.
Exploring this upper level proved no easy task. The balcony was filled with a black soup of bat guano mixed with water, and squirming in this goo were countless millipedes about 10 centimeters long: totally harmless to humans, of course, but not the greatest bedfellows for those of us who had to crawl on hands and knees through a long, low, narrow passage connecting the balcony to the Steam Room, a big chamber whose extreme heat and humidity wreaked havoc with our cameras.
On top of that, the chamber was filled with great, flat slabs of rock, all of them liberally coated with gooey guano. Any attempt to cross one of these slabs would send the caver sliding down in the darkness on his or her bottom towards who knows what. It is surprising we managed to get out of there without breaking a leg and we never carried on to see whether the mythical spiral staircase lay somewhere ahead.
Appreciating stalactites inside the sweltering Steam Room.
Covered with guano from head to toe, we would exit the cave with no other desire than to jump straight into the warm waters of the lagoon.
As we explored the area, we found more caves in almost all of those marble mountains, and a delightful, rustic thermal spring called Balneario Agua Caliente with pools at different temperatures that empty into an enchanting lagoon populated with ducks and geese and surrounded by tall palm trees, with cows grazing in an adjacent pasture.
This little paradise is located in a hilly area 17 kilometers southwest of Casimiro Castillo and is one of very few balnearios (water parks) we have ever found where you can swim or camp with no problems from radios or noisy crowds.
This is just one of many hot springs we found among those hills of marble, making it easy to see why pre-Hispanic people would have chosen this area for their annual shindig.
The petroglyphs of Casimiro Castillo are a perfect example of the hidden attractions within what I call the Magic Circle of western Mexico. They are, as well, a typical example of how vulnerable are these unprotected gems.
We returned to El Altilte Lagoon again and again to camp on its shore while we worked on mapping the cave and studying its bat population. One day, however, we arrived at the campsite only to discover that the lake had disappeared entirely, now replaced by crops and meadows. “What happened to the laguna?” we asked a local rancher.
Geese at Balneario Agua Caliente.
“Some entrepreneurs came along and decided to pump it dry,” he told us.
Sad to say, a similar fate has befallen some of the petroglyphs on the ancient bulletin board. One day we discovered that several of them were missing. Someone had made off with a chunk of the wall, perhaps weighing tonnes. No doubt this precious relic of Mexico’s history now graces someone’s cantina or front yard.
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I could list many more sites of natural beauty or archaeological importance in rural western Mexico that are protected neither by fences nor by guards. Rather than waiting for local or national government officials to take care of them, perhaps some organization that appreciates such places could investigate practical ways to preserve these little-known treasures before they vanish.
The easiest way to visit the attractions hidden among these marble mountains is to ask your GPS to take you to Casimiro Castillo, La Resolana, Jalisco, or the nearby town of La Concepción and then to ask a local person to show you around.
[soliloquy id="70287"]
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.
Despite the “grave damage” caused by teachers’ railway blockades in Michoacán, the interior secretary says the federal government remains determined not to use force against the protesters.
Olga Sánchez Cordero said President López Obrador has been clear in his orders regarding the protest in Michoacán, which started 11 days ago.
” . . . There will be no repression, [the federal government] will not resort to using public force. We are going to negotiate, and when negotiations are over, we will negotiate some more,” said the president’s second-in-command.
“There are very serious impacts,” she acknowledged, but insisted on negotiating. “If they need to be paid, what’s owed to them must be paid.”
“I believe there will be progress,” she said of the negotiations, adding that she hoped that in days, “hopefully hours,” the issue would be resolved and the blockades lifted.
The teachers’ blockades, which have gone up at seven different points of the Michoacán railway system, have fouled up the federal government’s plan to distribute fuel to Jalisco using tanker cars.
They have also snarled the movement of other cargo, creating losses that some estimates put in the billions of pesos.
Teachers camp on the railroad tracks in Michoacán.
Authorities in Michoacán have been unable to resolve a pay dispute with teachers despite receiving more than 1.6 billion pesos from the federal government last month to cover unpaid salaries.
Teachers affiliated with the CNTE and SNTE unions continue to block railroad tracks in the state, demanding payment of money they say they are owed by the state government along with other concessions.
The blockades, which started at the beginning of last week, have halted more than 140 trains, preventing the transport of a range of goods including 300,000 barrels of gasoline bound for Jalisco, where fuel shortages persist.
Héctor García, head of the administration and finance division of the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP), said that 1.65 billion pesos (US $87 million) was allocated to education authorities in Michoacán to pay salaries, bonuses and other benefits to teachers.
“[Michoacán] is the state that has received the most money from President Andrés Manuel López Obrador,” he said.
“[The money] helped the teachers’ movement a little bit and we resolved [the problem to some extent] but not in the way we wanted, it’s a problem that’s been going on for 30 years,” García added.
Now, authorities in Michoacán are asking for an additional 1.2 billion pesos (US $63.4 million) and for the federal government to assume responsibility for the payment of teachers’ salaries, he said.
García explained that due to the “seriousness of the problem,” the government could provide that amount of funding but the SNTE union has indicated that even if the money is forthcoming, it intends to maintain the blockades.
“There is an economic offer on the part of the federal government for more than 1 billion pesos to confront the education problem in our state but we won’t accept it because our demands are as much economic as administrative and political and those [demands] aren’t included in the offer,” the union said.
García said that federal authorities have held meetings with Michoacán Governor Silvano Aureoles at which it has been suggested that an “administrative reengineering” is needed to solve the pay dispute.
If the teachers’ railroad blockades continue, the economic losses, already estimated to be in the hundreds of millions if not billions of pesos, will continue to mount.
Among the industries that will be hardest hit is petroleum.
Mexico’s refineries transport a lot of fuel oil to Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, by rail for export to Asia.
But if they can’t get the product to the port city, it will accumulate in storage tanks at the refineries which, according to a former Pemex official, could force them to stop producing gasoline.
“If the tanks fill up, the refineries would have to go into a technical stoppage,” he said, a situation that would exacerbate fuel shortages, especially in the Bajío region.
The number of deaths caused by the explosion and fire last week at the Tlahuelilpan, Hidalgo, pipeline tap has risen to 109.
Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer Varela told this morning’s federal government press conference that the two most recent deaths occurred overnight.
He said 23 burn victims remain in hospitals in Mexico City, the states of México and Hidalgo, and in Galveston, Texas.
Meanwhile, more “high-risk” illegal pipeline taps have been identified in the Tlahuelilpan area after local residents came forward to report them to authorities.
Federal Police confirmed that 11 taps were located in the municipality of Tlahuelilpan and three more were found in Tetepango.
A Federal Police officer told the same press conference that citizens who reported the location of the pipeline taps did so because they were aware of the risk they pose to their communities.
He said no leaks were found and no drop was detected in the internal pressure of the pipelines, which continued to operate normally.
After the January 18 explosion, President López Obrador called on citizens to support the fight against petroleum theft by reporting pipeline taps.
The young man who breached AMLO's security stands with the president on the stage.
A young man made a mockery of President López Obrador’s security arrangements yesterday, storming the stage at an event in Puebla and approaching the president unimpeded.
As López Obrador addressed the crowd gathered in the pueblo mágico of Huauchinango to tout the benefits of the federal government’s social development programs, 19-year-old Eduardo Astudillo González looked on while hatching a plan to get up close and personal with the political veteran.
Separating him from the stage was a meter-high metal barrier but there was no heavy-handed security entourage to protect the president, who once remarked “the people will protect me, he who fights for justice has nothing to fear.”
Instead, just five young men and women, members of López Obrador’s so-called siervos de la nación (servants of the nation) who have been enlisted to help with the distribution of aid, stood guard along with a few members of the informal security detail known as the presidential ayudantía (literally assistants or helpers).
But they were no match for Astudillo.
In a matter of seconds, he jumped over the barrier, pushed past the siervos, brushed aside the ayudantía, scurried up the steps to the stage and then stopped, turning to the crowd and flashing a triumphant grin.
The young man, dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, had achieved no mean feat: while getting past “security” presented few challenges, he also managed to divert attention from AMLO, who had been railing against fuel theft, a common crime in Huauchinango.
For a moment, the president fell silent but then, with no lines of defense left to stop the intruder, he said, “Let’s see, come.”
Astudillo walked across the stage, shook López Obrador’s hand, whispered something in his ear and handed him a couple of crumpled pieces of paper – no harm done.
Having completed his audacious mission, Astudillo appeared intent on leaving the stage but the president had other ideas.
“But wait a second, no? Let’s see, wait, isn’t there a chair here [for the young man]?” López Obrador said after which the crowd broke into a chant of presidente, presidente!
And so Astudillo took a place on stage amid local politicians and some of the first beneficiaries of the government’s social programs and remained seated until the end of the proceedings.
López Obrador later said that Astudillo had asked him for help to join the federal government’s apprenticeship program known as “Youths Building the Future.”
“Here in Puebla, all of the young people of Huauchinango, of this region, of the whole state, are going to have work,” he remarked.
López Obrador’s lax security arrangements have been criticized by some who argue that the importance of the position of president demands that he take his personal safety more seriously.
But the 65-year-old leftist, who has made his “common man” persona a central part of his political identity, appears unlikely to change tack any time soon although this week he made one concession: he agreed to travel in a Chevrolet Suburban SUV rather than his Volkswagen Jetta.
Residents of the Granjas México neighborhood in Mexico City were woken up by a loud bang in the twilight hours of Thursday morning.
But it was just another building sinking in the old lakebed on which the city sits.
Authorities determined that a nine-story building in the Iztacalco borough sank 70 centimeters on its southern side, damaging windows and the sidewalks surrounding the building.
Public safety personnel and firefighters evacuated 40 workers from the building and sealed off the area while Civil Protection personnel inspected the structure for damage. Another inspection was expected to be carried out later in the day.
Five neighboring houses and a factory were also evacuated as a safety measure. The building was undergoing a renovation at the time of its sinking and was being advertised for rent as office space.
The borough’s mayor told reporters that he planned to verify all documents and permits pertaining to the structure to determine the legality of the work being done at the time of the incident.
Armando Quintero added that he was in touch with the building’s owners and that they were cooperating to determine the costs incurred by neighbors in having to evacuate their homes.
Sinking buildings are not uncommon in the capital as some areas are slowly but steadily dropping.
The deaths of around 50 manatees in Tabasco last year due to toxic algae served as the catalyst for a Puebla student to develop a submarine robot capable of measuring water contamination levels and sending the data it collects in real time.
Aldo Rodríguez, a computer science student at the Benemérita Autonomous University of Puebla, was shocked when he heard about the manatees that perished in the Bitzales region of the Gulf coast state in July and August 2018.
He decided to put his knowledge into practice by developing a robot that could help to prevent future deaths of manatees and other marine species.
Rodríguez told the National Council for Science and Technology (Conacyt) that his submarine robot prototype has sensors that measure water quality.
The data it collects is sent to a receiving device which then uploads the information to the internet, he explained, adding that sensors also relay information about the robot’s location and the condition of its battery.
The inventor and one of his two awards.
Rodríguez said that having information about the quality of water in lakes, rivers and streams could not only help to protect marine life but also prevent illnesses caused by the consumption of contaminated water.
He explained that pH levels of between 6.0 and 7.2 are best for most aquatic creatures and that outside that range most species will die.
Rodríguez said that his invention, which has already won the top prize at two science and technology fairs, could also be used at fish farms to ensure that water quality is maintained.
His submarine robot weighs three kilograms, is capable of reaching depths up to five meters and costs around 20,000 pesos (US $1,050) to make.
Yucatán will upgrade facilities at the attraction.
The Mexican Travel Agency Association (AMAV) in Quintana Roo has canceled a boycott of the Yucatán tourist attraction Chichén Itzá after that state’s governor offered incentives and promised upgrades and improvements.
In December, the state government doubled the entrance fee to the archaeological site (from 242 to 480 pesos) effective February 1, which prompted a boycott by 70 travel agencies representing approximately 70% of traffic to the site.
AMAV president Sergio González Rubiera told reporters that the archaeological site had not yet seen a drastic decrease in tourism because of the boycott. He explained that many tourist packages that include visits to Chichén Itzá along with the rest of the “Mayan World” had already been sold based on the previous admission charge.
He also commented that informal ticket re-sellers took advantage of the boycott, worsening the situation for travel agencies.
González said the AMAV and the state government negotiated an end to the boycott in exchange for incentives for the agencies and a series of measures to improve Chichén Itzá’s facilities in order to justify the elevated entrance fee.
