Violence has displaced more than 6,000 people in Guerrero, according to the head of a human rights organization, who is calling for the state government to declare a humanitarian crisis in response.
Manuel Olivares Hernández of the Morelos y Pavón Regional Human Rights Center said 2,000 people have been forced to leave the municipality of Leonardo Bravo and 2,000 more have fled several communities in the state’s Montaña region.
Around 800 families have also been displaced from the municipality of Chilapa due to threats from criminal gangs, while another 40 have fled two towns in Zitlala, he added.
In addition, high levels of violence in the state’s notoriously dangerous Tierra Caliente region and the opium-poppy growing Sierra region have also forced out residents but numbers for that area have not been documented.
“We could say that the number of displaced people due to violence in Guerrero is greater than the number in the Central American migrant caravan but the government has tried to make them invisible,” he said.
Together with Catholic priest and activist José Filiberto Velázquez Florencio, Olivares is demanding that the Guerrero government and Congress declare a humanitarian crisis so that the gravity of the situation is formally recognized and international organizations can intervene.
Olivares said that he and Velázquez are also seeking an urgent meeting with Governor Héctor Astudillo and representatives of the displaced people in order to find a “more effective” solution to the state’s violence and displacement problem.
Astudillo said Wednesday that violence in the Sierra region is a national security issue, a remark that Olivares considers evidence of the state government’s apathy towards tackling the issue.
“What’s happening here is that there is no political will to confront the situation. The state government has allowed this problem to grow and declaring itself incompetent is the only way out that is left for the governor,” he said.
Olivares also called on the state and federal governments to disarm groups posing as community police, claiming they have proliferated.
“It shouldn’t be possible for there to be a hail of bullets in front of the army and the state police. The problem here is there is a hodgepodge [of security forces], an interrelation, an interdependence between authorities and organized crime. We live in a narco-state and in Mexico there is practically a narco-government,” he said.
An indoor water park developer has selected a city in Hidalgo as the site of its first park outside the United States and Canada.
Great Wolf Resorts will invest 2.8 billion pesos (US $139.2 million) in its new park in Tepeji del Río, situated 80 kilometers north of Mexico City.
The company owns and operates family resorts that offer restaurants, arcades, spas, fitness centers and children’s activities in addition to a water park.
The Tepeji water park will create close to 3,000 direct and indirect jobs, the company said.
Construction is scheduled to start in the first quarter of 2019 and conclude in the fall of 2021.
Great Wolf Resorts CEO Murray Hennessy explained that the company considered more than 170 countries before deciding on two finalists — Mexico and the United Kingdom.
Hidalgo was chosen for the potential market reach it has in central Mexico, its economic growth potential and particularly because of the attractive terms offered by the state government.
Hidalgo Governor Omar Fayad Meneses observed that one-third of Mexico’s population lives within a 100-kilometer radius of the location of the new water park.
The federal environmental protection agency says toxic algae was responsible for the deaths of 48 manatees in Tabasco earlier this year.
Profepa said there was no evidence that oil pollution from Pemex facilities was responsible.
Most of the manatee deaths occurred in the municipalities of Macuspana, Centla and Jonuta in an area known as the Bitzales region.
Agency chief Guillermo Haro Bélchez said experts analyzed the causes of the deaths during 13 meetings between May and October, concluding that a prolonged drought, high temperatures and the presence of fecal matter and urban solid waste in the water led to the algae growth.
“The cause of death was food poisoning from the chronic accumulation of toxic algae, in lethal concentrations, leading to the death of the 48 manatees,” he stated.
Haro observed that of 35 studies conducted on the waters of the Bitzales region, only one revealed elevated concentrations of heavy metals.
But he said that study was conducted by an unaccredited laboratory that did not follow chain of custody procedures with the water samples.
The other studies found that heavy metal levels were well below the maximum concentration allowed.
Haro said no manatee deaths have been reported since October 26 in the region, which has an estimated population of 500 to 1,000 animals.
Profepa recommended monitoring the water to permit the early detection of toxic algae blooms, controlling the spread of invasive species and reforestation programs on river banks among other measures.
Haro said recent studies show that toxic algae levels have returned to normal.
The arrival in Tijuana of large numbers of Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States has triggered an anti-migrant backlash from residents and the city’s mayor, who has been labelled “Tijuana’s Trump.”
Members of the first migrant caravan, made up mainly of Hondurans who entered Mexico October 19, began arriving in the Baja California border city early this week after a journey of more than 4,000 kilometers.
There are now almost 2,000 caravan members in Tijuana and another 4,500 migrants are expected to arrive today.
Tijuana has a long history of welcoming migrants from many different parts of the world but not everyone is happy about the current mass arrival.
Anti-migrant groups have sprung up on social media including one on Facebook called Tijuana en contra de la caravana migrante (Tijuana against the migrant caravan) that has attracted almost 400 followers.
Some posts to the page have included claims that there are gang members, drug addicts and even murderers among the caravan members while others have sought to incite violence against them.
At least one group created on the mobile messaging service WhatsApp has also been used to provoke anti-migrant sentiment and to urge violent action against caravan members.
The virtual opposition turned real Wednesday night when a group of about 200 residents confronted migrants sleeping on the beach next to the border fence that separates Mexico from the United States.
The residents threatened the migrants, telling them they were not welcome and threw stones at them. Scuffles broke out but a contingent of police arrived at the scene and prevented an escalation of hostilities by directing the migrants to a bus and taking them to a shelter at the Benito Juárez sports center.
Honduran Jairo Sorto said that Mexicans throughout the country had welcomed the caravan and wondered why things were different in Tijuana.
“We’ve walked across Mexico and not one state said, ‘we don’t want immigrants in this country,’” he said.
Tijuana Mayor Gastelum: unhappy over migrant ‘horde.’
Municipal police director Mario Martínez said that two migrants involved in the confrontation had been detained for misconduct, adding that three others had been arrested for consuming drugs inside a shelter.
All five will be deported to their country of origin, he said.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum added his voice to the opposition against the caravan, declaring in a television interview that the migrants are not wanted in the border city.
Echoing the claims made on social media, Gastélum said that there are “pot smokers,” “bums” and “bad people” among the caravan members, adding that he would organize a citizens’ consultation in order to decide whether the city would continue to welcome the migrants.
“Tijuana is a city of migrants but we don’t want them [arriving] in this way. It was different with the Haitians, they had [immigration] papers, [their arrival] was orderly, it wasn’t a horde, excuse the expression . . .” he said.
“These people arrive in an aggressive, rude way, chanting, challenging the authorities, doing what we’re not accustomed to doing in Tijuana . . . I don’t dare to say that it is all the migrants but there are some who are bums, pot smokers, they’re attacking families in [the beachside borough] Playas de Tijuana, what is that?”
The mayor also called on federal lawmakers to allocate resources to Tijuana so that it could attend to the migrants. Most shelters in the border city are already at or near capacity.
“We need the support now or never . . .” Gastélum said.
His comments were criticized by the head of a migrants’ advocacy organization, Agenda Migrante, who called the mayor “Tijuana’s Trump” and warned he was inciting xenophobic attitudes with discriminatory remarks.
Eunice Rendón urged Mexicans to consider “the racism and language” of President Trump and its impact on hate crimes, which recorded an increase last year.
Federal Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete Prida also expressed concern over the situation in Tijuana.
He told a press conference yesterday that the government is worried about the possibility of a confrontation on the border if the migrants don’t agree to lodge asylum requests in an orderly manner but instead try to enter the United States en masse.
“What is it that we don’t want? For violence to be the dynamic moving forward from here in the face of a possible attempt to enter the United States in an untimely and disorderly way, knowing that the actions and discourse of our northern neighbor towards a vulnerable population are extraordinarily hostile,” he said.
What approach the migrants will take to try to cross into the United States remains unclear with a decision set to be made once the largest cohort of the first caravan has arrived in Tijuana.
There are already around 3,000 migrants in Tijuana waiting to lodge asylum requests with United States authorities, meaning that the new arrivals could face lengthy waits to file their claims.
Nick Miroff, a national security reporter for The Washington Post, wrote on Twitter today that “if there are 3,140 [migrants] on waiting list and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] is processing 90/day, that’s 1 month before caravan members can begin to approach the port [of entry].”
With members of two other migrant caravans likely to arrive in Tijuana in the coming weeks, Miroff said that it could take two to three months for U.S. authorities to hear all the asylum requests.
“Are the younger and more restless members of the caravans going to wait that long?” he asked.
The United States government has deployed 5,900 troops to the southern border to bolster security in the face of what U.S. President Trump has called an “invasion.”
Barbed wire is also being affixed to the border fence to act as an additional deterrent to any attempts to scale it illegally.
Trump frequently railed against the caravan in the lead-up to the November 6 U.S. midterm elections but has been much quieter on the issue since.
Despite his hardline rhetoric towards the migrants, the majority remained determined to reach the Mexico-United States border.
How many achieve their final goal of asylum in Trump’s America remains to be seen.
Gallery founders Rosalía Zepeda and José de Jesús Olivares.
Architect José “Pepe” Olivares and his wife Rosalía have been in love with what they call “non-figurative art” for many years.
During that time they and various like-minded friends worked hard to promote the establishment of an abstract art gallery somewhere in western Mexico, but to no avail.
“Then one day,” they told me, “we stood together inside our home and looked around us. Our children had all grown up and gone off to raise families of their own. Our house, which is very large, with many rooms, was now empty. Why look elsewhere, we thought: let’s start our own art gallery right here.”
So in early 2017, Jalisco’s Center for the Study and Diffusion of Non-Figurative Art — or CIANF — was born in a private home in the rustic community of Pinar de la Venta, located at the edge of the huge Primavera Forest, which lies immediately west of Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city.
The center began to attract attention in May of 2017 when it hosted an exhibit of archive paintings loaned by Mexico’s most prestigious institute of abstract art, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Manuel Felguérez in the city of Zacatecas.
A visitor views the “hybrid” art of Alejandro Brambila.
“We had works by famous artists like Felguérez himself, the Catalans Josep Guinovart and Jordi Boldó, as well as the creator of Guadalajara’s Los Cubitos monument, sculptor Fernando González Gortázar,” I was told by the Olivares. “People flocked to Pinar de la Venta to see these masterpieces and the TV and newspapers called it a great success.”
Intrigued, I popped in twice to observe the art lessons maestro Pepe Olivares gives to children and adults every week. That’s where I discovered that, like Picasso, this teacher is just as talented in depicting realism as abstraction.
Commented Olivares, “I often start with drawing or painting recognizable subjects like flowers or a landscape and after my students have mastered these basic techniques, we move on to removing elements until only form and color remain.”
I asked one of the adult students, Ana Rosa, how she liked the class. “For me, this is therapy. I forget my children, I forget all my troubles and I relax totally. I really look forward — with great enthusiasm — to coming here every Thursday. I just wish I could do this twice a week.”
After the class, I sat down with Olivares and asked him how he became interested in art. He immediately told me that his story was “not at all unusual.”
“In my childhood,” Pepe told me, “matches were used a lot, especially for lighting the stove. Well, I was maybe four years old and my father showed me a matchbox which had a reproduction of a famous work of art on its cover. These were called ‘Clásicos de Lujo la Central’ and my father gave me a challenge: ‘I bet you can’t draw this,’ he said and I replied, ‘Oh yes, I can!’ Right there was my first artistic awakening, you could say.”
Sculptures by Colima-based Estanislao Contreras.
I told Pepe that this didn’t seem “usual” to me one bit, but he replied that he had spoken to many of Jalisco’s artists “and most of them told me they got going in exactly the same way, with those matchbook covers.”
Pepe’s gusto for drawing stayed with him and he recalls, “when I was in third grade, they asked us to draw a picture of Miguel Hidalgo. I did mine on a big sheet of pasteboard and I remember the pride I felt at succeeding to do this, even though I suspect my drawing must have been pretty ugly. But with that, I decided that art was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And from then on, I drew and drew. This is why I am involved in giving painting classes to children here, because this is when a vocation can be born.”
Pepe Olivares’ father was practical enough to convince him he should take up architecture as a career, which he did at the University of Guadalajara. “Among my teachers,” he says, “were people like the German architect Hors Hartung, who knew a lot about pre-Hispanic architecture and also about modern abstract painters and sculptors.
“His classes were delightful! I learned a lot from him. We had a class with him called ‘Integración Plástica’ which involved aesthetic games, playing with volume. We were not trying to represent anything or to copy anything from nature; it was all about forming pleasing shapes. It was an exercise in abstraction, working only with forms and colors, and it was here that I got my introduction to abstract art.”
Talking to Pepe Olivares brought me back to the wonderful works of geometric art I had seen during my years in Arabia. When religious leaders forbade them to draw images of any living thing, Islamic artists poured their creativity into the development of arabesque decoration and transformed writing into a new art form, Arabic calligraphy.
In these cases, restrictions imposed from without led creative minds in new directions. Abstraction, it seemed to me, was rather similar, but the restrictions are imposed by the artist.
[soliloquy id="65504"]
In Netflix’s The Ministry of Time, the 17th-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez is transported to our era. One day someone refers to him as “The greatest Spanish painter.” Velázquez replies, “I’m not the greatest. Picasso is . . . . When I’m looking at one of his paintings and some guy comes up saying, ‘look at those squiggles, my kid does better,’ I don’t know, I feel like I want to strangle him. What an ignoramus!
“Some painters do abstract because that’s all they know, but not Picasso! At 14 years of age, his paintings looked like photos. This is what I call The Picasso Theory: only the man who paints real life better than anybody else can then go ahead and do whatever he feels like.”
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The center hosts exhibits, offers classes and workshops and is setting up a library “where people of all ages can learn about abstract art, do research and experiment with different techniques.” It also hosts visiting artists, such as Algerian abstract painter Ghislaine Thomas, who is preparing for an exhibit in Mérida, Yucatán, this coming January.
• To visit the center, call in advance at cell 333 616 6242. For more information see their Facebook page.
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.
Salinas, left, and Hank, right, will be among members of the new advisory council announced by López Obrador, center.
President-elect López Obrador reached out to the business community yesterday, naming eight businessmen to a new business advisory council.
In a video message published on social media, López Obrador said the idea to create the council came from the business sector.
It will be coordinated by the future president’s chief of staff, Alfonso Romo, who is a business tycoon himself.
“I’m going to meet with them [the council members] every two or three months. They, and I as well, are going to invite other business people so that this council gets even stronger and becomes a civil society institution that helps the government,” the president-elect said.
López Obrador stressed that Mexico will need public, private and foreign investment to achieve the 4% annual economic growth he is targeting.
“We need the support of the business sector so that there is investment, so that jobs are created. I assure you that there is no reason for concern because I know very well what has to be done to help the most humble and poorest people,” he said.
The businessmen who will join the advisory council “want to help me, want to give me their points of view, their visions,” López Obrador added.
Creation of the group was welcomed by members of the private sector, including the president of the influential Business Coordinating Council (CCE).
“We think that it is very positive that the president-elect is incorporating distinguished members of our sector to his team of advisors . . . We are certain they will offer interesting opinions and perspectives from a business point of view, which will contribute to an atmosphere of trust,” Juan Pablo Castañón wrote on Twitter.
The members of the new council are:
• Ricardo Salinas Pliego, founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, a conglomerate that includes Banco Azteca, TV Azteca and Elektra.
• Bernardo Gómez, executive co-president of broadcaster Televisa.
• Olegario Vázquez Aldir, CEO of Grupo Empresarial Ángeles, a conglomerate that includes Imagen TV, the newspaper Excélsior and Hospitales Ángeles.
• Carlos Hank González, president of banking and financial services company Grupo Financiero Banorte, vice-president of corn flour and tortilla multinational Gruma and CEO of the conglomerate Grupo Hermes.
• Daniel Chávez, CEO of Grupo Vidanta, a hotel and resort conglomerate.
• Miguel Rincón, CEO of paper company Bio-Pappel.
• Sergio Gutiérrez, CEO of metal supply company DeAcero.
• Miguel Alemán Magnani, executive president of the airline Interjet.
Braxton-Andrew: reported killed by a criminal gang.
The United States citizen who disappeared in Chihuahua October 28 was assassinated the same day by drug traffickers, state Governor Javier Corral said Thursday evening.
Patrick Braxton-Andrew, 34, had been staying in the Copper Canyon town of Urique when he left his hotel and went for a walk. He never returned.
A search began about two days later after he failed to arrive in Mexico City to meet his brother. It continued at least until early this week when authorities observed that the region in which Braxton-Andrew disappeared was under the control of a crime gang leader known as “El Chueco.”
Tonight, Governor Corral identified that gang leader as José Noriel Portilo Gil and claimed his gang assassinated the missing man in a location in Urique known as La Playita.
“Through the advances in the investigation I can say that it was a cowardly and brutal assassination of a person who was totally innocent . . . whose misfortune was to cross paths with this criminal.”
The governor provided no further details.
The victim was a Spanish teacher in Davidson, North Carolina.
His family said earlier today via Facebook that the search continues for his body.
“Patrick died doing what he loved — traveling and meeting people.”
The Bank of Mexico has concerns over direction of new government.
The Bank of México (Banxico) raised its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points today to a nearly 10-year-high of 8%, citing concerns over inflation that the incoming government’s economic polices risk fanning.
The rate hike, expected by economists, is the third this year.
Another 25-basis-point increase would take the interest rate to its highest level since Banxico adopted a new benchmark rate policy in January 2008.
Analysts consulted by the news agency Bloomberg said there is a 100% probability that the central bank will increase rates again next month.
In a statement, Banxico said it raised rates today because the outlook for inflation had “deteriorated significantly,” explaining that there are “significant risks related to the possible adoption of policies that could structurally affect the economy’s price formation process.”
The Mexican peso and the stock exchange have taken a hit recently as concerns grow over the economic direction the incoming López Obrador government will take once in office.
The president-elect has already confirmed that the US $14-billion Mexico City International Airport will be cancelled, triggering worry over the economic impact and a slide in the peso, while bank stocks plummeted last week after senators from the soon-to-be ruling Morena party unexpectedly presented a proposal to curb bank charges.
The peso was hurt by the airport cancellation decision, Banxico said, and “in general by markets’ concerns regarding both the incoming administration’s policies and some legislative initiatives.”
The currency strengthened slightly on the back of the Banxico rates announcement but is still trading above 20 to the US dollar. A persistently high dollar could place further pressure on inflation.
Banxico targets inflation of 3% with 1% tolerance in both directions but the annual rate in October was 4.9%.
The bank said that it would take any necessary action, including holding or hiking rates, to get inflation on track to achieve the 3% goal.
Many banks are forecasting both a weaker peso and weaker growth this year and next due to uncertainty about López Obrador’s policy direction.
The Fitch credit rating agency revised its outlook for Mexico to negative two days after the airport cancellation announcement.
Charles Seville, Fitch’s primary analyst for Mexico, said the decision to scrap the airport, which followed a public consultation on the future of the project, “came as a shock to the markets.”
He also said early this month that “there is the suggestion that other projects could be put to a popular vote, which would introduce more uncertainty.”
That suggestion became reality this week when the president-elect announced that another public vote would be held on November 24 and 25 on his proposal to build the so-called Maya train and two other infrastructure projects as well as 10 social programs.
López Obrador, a leftist political veteran, takes office on December 1.
Colonia Narvarte has its own castle, located on Enrique Rebsamen street.
Mexico City’s growing popularity in the last 10 years has meant that return tourists look farther and farther afield for new neighborhoods to explore and hidden culinary gems to discover — they have an unquenchable thirst for more, more, more of Mexico’s capital.
This is great news for some previously overlooked colonias (neighborhoods) in Mexico City. While Polanco, Roma and Condesa have all had their heyday, neighborhoods like San Rafael, St. Maria de Ribera, Colonia del Valle and Colonia Narvarte are just now starting to be looked upon with fresh eyes.
Colonia Narvarte sits just across from Colonia Roma on the other side of the bustling Viaducto highway. The major avenues that cross it, connecting these two neighborhoods, were once simple wooden bridges, just wide enough to carry a single automobile across what was then the Piedad river.
The Narvarte neighborhood was built atop the Nalvarte Hacienda, originally owned by Don Felipe José de Nalvarte towards the end of the 18th century. It was later purchased by the Escandón family — wealthy Mexican elites that gave their name to another nearby neighborhood.
Right after the Mexican Revolution, José Escandón, then owner of the hacienda, began to divide the property for residential purposes, a job that was officially finished by a United States businessman named Herbert Lewis when he bought up the remaining land.
One dining option is Piloncillo y Cascabel.
The layout of the neighborhood has its orderly rectangle streets cut through with several long, diagonal avenues with large medians and wide sidewalks. Here you’ll find almost none of those early Art Deco mansions that can be seen in Roma or Condesa, but instead functionalist or Streamline Moderne apartment buildings line the major avenues (which is not to say that there aren’t some stunning pieces of architecture), part of the modern architectural movement in the 1940s when Narvarte was being developed.
Today’s Narvarte is cut into pieces by heavily-trafficked avenues, but still has pockets of residential charm, particularly the length of Pitagoras avenue from Division del Norte to Obrera Mundial and around the Las Americas park.
There is also a growing crowd of young Mexican entrepreneurs who found it too expensive to set up shop in Roma or Condesa and are converting the Narvarte into their own bohemian hangout.
Third-wave coffee gurus AlmaNegra were one of the first to set up shop on Universidad street, but by spreading the coffee fever they have been joined by Tesler, Café Maria and Black Rabbit. And what goes better with coffee than handmade pastries and baked goods from one of the new, European-style bakeries Pan Nube and Costra?
Add to the mix artisanal ice cream from Bigotes de Leche and you have yourself a day of delicious gluttony.
While a few gourmet-leaning restaurants have opened in Narvarte (think Piloncillo y Cascabel), the neighborhood’s most popular meal is still tacos. Tacos are on every corner and along every street here, partially owing to the fact that the area is still working middle class and there is massive demand for quick street food from office and construction workers during the day.
Templo de la Medalla Milagrosa.
Along Obrera Mundial or Cuauhtémoc avenues are delicious temptation after delicious temptation, but a few spots stand a head above the rest. El Vilsito, a mechanic’s shop by day, taco stand by night, or Taquería Don Frank right outside the small Narvarte market are two to try.
During the day, the entire Etiopia roundabout (Ethiopia has a Mexico roundabout as well, stemming from the two countries close ties beginning in the 1950s) is swarming with stands serving everything from Puebla-style cemita sandwiches to Michoacan-style carnitas tacos.
It’s a street food wonderland and you get your pick. Because so much of the food in the neighborhood caters to locals, there is also a large swath of international cuisine (Pinche Gringo American-style BBQ, Quiero Pizza, Ela Gyros, the Balkan Grill) and dozens upon dozens of comida corrida joints (set price lunches).
For a day that doesn’t completely revolve around eating, the neighborhood is pleasant for walking (minus the massive avenues) and there are even a few gems to stumble upon if you keep your eyes open.
The Las Americas park is Narvarte’s biggest green space and has several cute coffee and juice shops around the perimeter. In the middle of the park sits a tiny outdoor amphitheater that presents plays and shows al fresco.
A couple of must-see buildings are the tower of the Secretariat of Communication and Transportation, whose façade was decorated by Juan O’Gorman (of the UNAM campus library fame) and other young muralists when it was completed in the 50s.
Narvarte’s Las Americas park.
The Templo de la Medalla Milagrosa, with its sharp steeple tower piercing the Mexico City sky, is a bracing example of the style of Mexican-Spanish architect Félix Candela from the mid-20th century.
Many of the streets of Narvarte are named after the country’s archaeological sites (Uxmal, Petén, Xochicalco, Zempoala, La Quemada, Tajín, Palenque, Mitla) and along them you will find lots of adorable examples of early California colonial architecture, something rare in other parts of the city.
Hidden among them (on Pitágoras, between Esperanza and Obrero Mundial streets to be exact) is an altar to the Santa Muerte erected by a father grateful for the salvation of his son from a motorcycle accident, and the the Mexican Sugar Art Museum (open by appointment only 555 523 7493 or 5523 8483), the life’s work of sugar artist Marithé de Alvarado.
The neighborhood’s glittering Parque Delta shopping mall was once the Parque de Seguro Social, the city’s main baseball stadium hosting the rival Diablos and Tigres for decades. It was a used as a temporary morgue in the aftermath of the 1985 earthquake and forever after was condemned to be a spectre in the minds of locals.
The 2017 earthquake also hit this neighborhood and its sister colonia Del Valle particularly hard. The scars of damaged and demolished buildings can still be seen as you walk its streets.
While the Narvarte doesn’t have as much upscale nightlife as Roma or Condesa, there are lots of taco stands and bars, and two particularly good evening drinking options – Beer Bros and Hop 2 – serving excellent local craft beer.
Beers Bros is a tiny hole in the wall with about 20 or so local beers on tap and picnic tables out front. Hop 2 has 52 beers on tap, a massive beer garden, big screen TVs and a food truck selling pub food like chicken wings and pizzas. Both draw a crowd and quench a thirst.
If touristy is what you want stick to the beaten path. If novelty and neighborhood ambiance is what you crave, come to Colonia Narvarte.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
A 36-year-old woman from the United States is in a medically-induced coma in El Paso, Texas, more than two weeks after nose job surgery in Ciudad Juárez went wrong.
Laura Ávila, a real-estate agent from Dallas, Texas, went to a plastic surgery clinic in the Chihuahua border city on October 30 to have the procedure done.
The price Ávila paid for the nose job at RinoCenter was reportedly less than one-third the usual cost in the United States.
According to her fiancé Enrique Cruz, medical staff at the RinoCenter administered anesthesia to Ávila before telling him later that they couldn’t operate because her blood pressure had dropped.
Cruz responded that he wanted the clinic to move her to a hospital.
“That’s when they told us, ‘Oh, by the way, she had a cardiac arrest,’” he said.
Angie Ávila, the woman’s sister, told Dallas television station WFAA that “they injected anesthesia to her spine at the clinic and instead of it flowing down her body it went to her brain, which caused severe swelling.”
After eight hours in a room at the RinoCenter clinic, Ávila was eventually transferred to a Ciudad Juárez hospital.
She spent four days there while her family tried to arrange a transfer to a hospital across the border in El Paso.
However, Mexican hospital officials refused to sign the transfer papers until Ávila’s medical bill was paid.
“The hospital in Mexico basically held us hostage because we wouldn’t pay the full amount,” Angie Ávila said.
Laura Ávila was eventually transferred to an El Paso hospital by ambulance but without her medical records, which are critical for treatment. The family has hired lawyers in Juárez to help them obtain them.
In El Paso, doctors gave a grim diagnosis within hours of Ávila’s arrival.
“They’ve told us that she suffered severe brain damage so much so that she will never be our Laura again.”
The family was given the choice of removing Ávila from life support or to have breathing and feeding tubes connected to keep her alive.
“They told us she would never be able to walk or eat for herself again or speak,” Angie Ávila said.
However, Laura’s family and friends refuse to give up and last night held a candlelight vigil in San Jacinto Plaza in downtown El Paso.
“Now we’re waiting for a miracle,” Ávila’s aunt Ericka Montes told the newspaper El Diario de El Paso.
“I feel sad and very upset about what happened to my friend,” said María Hernández, as tears ran down her face. “She was very beautiful and didn’t need to have surgery . . .”
The vigil, at which attendees prayed for a quick recovery, was led by Ávila’s devastated fiancé.
“Laura is a marvelous woman. She loved to dance, sing, cook and travel and was very generous. She opened her heart to everyone,” Cruz said.
In recent days, friends and family have been encouraged by signs of life that they have seen.
“She opens her eyes, she’s fighting,” Angie Avila said. “She moves her legs or raises her arms.”
Cruz and Ávila’s family hope to move her to Dallas where they believe that she can get better care.
However, three major hospitals in the city have refused to admit Ávila because she doesn’t have medical insurance.
Angie Ávila has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover her sister’s treatment. Supporters have so far pledged just over US $75,000 of a US $150,000 goal.
