The accolades for Roma, the award-winning film by Alfonso Cuarón, continued today with the announcement of the Oscar nominations — fully 10 of them, including best picture, best director and best actress.
The filmmaker himself became the third person ever to be nominated in four categories in a single year, joining a short roster that includes Orson Welles and Warren Beatty. Cuarón was nominated for direction, cinematography, original screenplay and best picture.
Yalitza Aparicio’s debut acting performance earned her a nomination as best actress, a singular list that also includes another first-timer, Lady Gaga, along with Glenn Close, Olivia Colman and Melissa McCarthy.
The nominations earned by Roma, described by the newspaper SFGate as a “deeply personal exhumation of [Cuarón’s] Mexico City childhood,” also included best supporting actress, best foreign language film, best production design, best sound editing and best sound mixing.
Roma also gave the film’s distributor, Netflix, its first best-picture nomination, a prize that has until now eluded the streaming giant.
Only one other film was nominated in as many categories as Roma this year — Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Favourite.
Best-actress nominee Aparicio, 25, who plays a domestic worker in the home of a family living in Mexico City’s Roma district in the 1970s, is the second Mexican actress to earn the nomination. The first was Salma Hayek for her role in Frida in 2002.
Roma had already made history earlier this month when it became the first foreign language film to win the award for best picture at the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards, where it won three other awards as well.
Other awards won by the film include two Golden Globes for best director and best foreign film.
The other best-film nominees this year are Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Bohemian Rhapsody, The Favourite, Green Book, A Star Is Born and Vice.
The Academy Awards will be broadcast February 24 at 7:00pm.
Mexico had its most violent year on record in 2018 with more than 33,000 homicides, according to official data.
The National Public Security System (SNSP) reported that there were 33,341 murders last year compared to 28,866 in 2017, an increase of 15%.
The figure is the highest since comparable records were first kept in 1997, underscoring the mammoth task faced by the new federal government to combat violence in Mexico.
Homicide rates began to rise when former president Felipe Calderón launched a militarized war on drug cartels in late 2006. They continued to go up during the six-year term of his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto, who maintained the strategy of using the military to fight crime.
In December, President López Obrador’s first month in office, there were 2,842 homicides, an increase of almost 10% on the number recorded in the same month of 2017.
In sheer numbers, Guanajuato was the most violent state in Mexico last year, recording 3,290 homicides, almost triple the number of 2017.
Fuel theft, a crime that the government is currently cracking down on, is believed to be linked to a large percentage of the murders in the state.
Guanajuato has been hit by turf wars between gangs of fuel thieves known as huachicoleros, who also have been involved in bloody confrontations with police that have left high death tolls.
México state saw the second highest number of intentional homicides, with 2,652 followed by Guerrero, with 2,472 and Jalisco, with 2,420.
In per capita terms, Colima was the most violent state, with just over 81 homicides for each 100,000 inhabitants, followed by Baja California and Guerrero.
Raúl Benítez, a security expert and professor at the National Autonomous University, told the AFP news agency that he believed the increase in violence was linked to a decrease in the military’s willingness to combat drug-related crime.
“I believe that the army became paralyzed to a great extent in operations against drug trafficking due to the fear of being accused of violating human rights,” he said.
Mike Vigil, a former chief of international relations for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said the higher homicide numbers are related to “the conflict between drug-trafficking groups,” especially that between the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel.
“But apart from that, there are a lot of drug trafficking groups that are trying to gain more territory, gain more power and go from being a normal criminal group to a transnational one,” he added.
As a central part of its strategy to combat the high levels of violent crime plaguing Mexico, the federal government is proposing the creation of a new national guard.
The search for a United States citizen missing in Baja California Sur since December 18 is now focusing on locating a couple who gave him a ride near Todos Santos.
Mexican authorities and Mexican and U.S. volunteers have spent almost a month looking for Max Watson, 28, of Hood River, Oregon.
He was last seen by a rancher when Watson parked his van at the ranch before getting into a gray or silver car in which a Caucasian couple were traveling on or about December 18.
The ranch is located about five kilometers from the La Burrera trailhead to the Sierra de Laguna mountains, an area that has already been searched extensively, according to Wiley Watson, the missing man’s brother.
“At this point we believe finding the couple that last saw Max alive and gave him a ride is critical,” said Watson, “We need to hear from anyone that was visiting the Sierra de la Laguna mountains east of Todos Santos on December 18 or may know anything about who this mystery couple was.”
He said if the searchers knew where the couple left Max Watson or anything about their interaction with him “it would spark a renewed hope of finding him that we desperately need right now.”
The search has been conducted on land and air and with the help of dogs, but to no avail.
Anyone with information can contact Watson’s family and friends at [email protected].
The malecón in Chapala, one of Mexico's popular destinations for retirees. File photo
Needless to say, the social and political rancor in North America has reached new heights (or lows). In the United States political sphere, the November 2018 mid-term elections resulted in the Democratic Party wresting control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
The U.S. president’s approval ratings hover around 38%. The issue of U.S. immigration reform remains paralyzed amidst political acrimony. Yet, the U.S. president remains adamant about his desire to obtain billions of dollars to build a border wall to keep prospective immigrants out of the U.S.
Meanwhile, a new norm has developed.
Obscured by all of the above is the steady flow of North Americans headed south — to Mexico. Frankly, it’s an exodus; or a Mexodus. According to CBS News, the number of Americans retiring outside the United States is growing exponentially. Between 2010 and 2015 the number grew 17% and the figure is expected to rise during the next 10 years as boomer retirement continues.
According to several sources, Mexico is now considered the preferred retirement home for an estimated one million to two million American retirees — more than any other country. According to Senior Living magazine, an estimated 10,000 baby boomers will achieve retirement age each day between now and 2030.
“Where should I retire?” is a common question in North America as baby boomers contemplate how and where they might spend the remainder of this life. For tens of thousands, this question includes destinations outside the U.S. or Canada. Oftentimes this process involves mulling over Mexico.
Every January, the publication International Living provides retirees with suggestions using their Annual Global Retirement Index. In 2018, Mexico was ranked as the second best place to retire. Estimates vary, but it’s safe to conclude that a few million Americans and Canadians now reside primarily in Mexico. That’s a lot of gringos who have made the leap.
I completed two two-week visits to the Guadalajara and Lake Chapala areas in central Mexico in August and October-November 2018. The purpose of these trips was to examine the possibility for retirement in this locale, already home to thousands of expat retirees/resident tourists from the U.S., Canada, Europe and the United Kingdom.
What motivated my wife and I to invest in considering Mexico? During these exploratory visits, we had the opportunity to speak with dozens upon dozens of North American baby boomers in Mexico. Some were already residing there. Others were exploring the possibilities as we were.
Our question was: “What inspires retiring North American baby boomers to consider Mexico as their retirement home?” Here’s what they told us:
1. Reduce my cost of living. As study after study indicates, North American baby boomers are ill prepared financially for retirement. HousingWire magazine says this “lack of financial preparedness” has become the primary cause of anxiety among boomers.
According to International Living, you can live on US $1,865 per month in Mexico including rent, utilities, groceries, entertainment, health care, household help and incidentals. For a couple, the figure is $2,500 per month.
Again, costs are relative. Want to live in a tourist area near a Mexican beach on the sea? Your costs will be significantly higher. The same is true for areas in Mexico where North American retirees are already well established like the Lake Chapala/Ajijic area and San Miguel de Allende. The current peso to the dollar foreign exchange reality makes reducing the cost of living even more practical.
2. A better climate. For many, the motivation to move toward a better climate and retire the snow shovel, winter clothing and umbrella, and avoid sleet, ice, humidity, excessive heat and the like was a common reply. Of course, Mexico is a massive geographic area. However, the variety of improved climate choices within the country make it attractive to retiring baby boomers.
3. More affordable health care. Mexico, particularly when compared to the U.S., has a vastly more affordable health care environment. Of course, this depends upon one’s current medical requirements and those that may arise in the future.
No, Medicare is not valid for medical treatment outside the U.S. Thus, you must rely on cash and qualifying for available Mexican health care coverage for those who hold both temporary and permanent visas. Of course, for treatment requiring Medicare coverage you can return to the U.S. for the same.
4. A cultural adventure. A common response was the desire for a cultural adventure. Mexico’s proximity to Canada and the U.S. provides just that. From food to landscapes to architecture, language, the arts and the people, Mexico possesses what North American retirees seeking new cultural experiences are after.
Baby boomers have been characterized by Alexis Abrahamson as those who “make smart decisions based on available resources.” They are independent and “make up their own minds and determine what is most valuable or significant.”
Moving to Mexico for retirement appears to have become the new norm for North American boomers. There is no wall that can prevent the flow of North American retirees relocating to Mexico — along with their substantial economic contributions to the Mexican economy.
Bill Dahl is a United States-based investigative journalist who recently completed four weeks in the Guadalajara/Chapala region of central Mexico examining the current challenges in the area.
A former presidential candidate and wife of ex-president Felipe Calderón yesterday began the registration of a new political party called México Libre, or Mexico Free.
Longtime politician Margarita Zavala said that neither she nor her husband would use the new party to launch presidential bids in 2024. Instead, México Libre is intended to generate political participation and provide an alternative for like-minded individuals to “organize, deliberate and give themselves heart and soul to the reconstruction of Mexico.”
“What I want is an alternative for men and women who need a path like the one I found [in politics].”
Zavala told the newspaper Milenio that México Libre would respond to new political challenges and would not be a recycled National Action Party, to which she and Calderón belonged for many years.
But it will share some fundamental ideas. While the doors will be open to anyone wishing to participate, the new party will be ideologically center-right:
“It is important to me to point out that extremism is not helpful, and less in times like these — they require clarity, principles, political and economic freedom, laws, human development and sustainability.”
The former candidate reiterated that the party’s leaders would be ordinary people attracted by its ideology.
“This isn’t an alternative for one person; it’s an alternative for thousands.”
There are 7,000 new hotel rooms but can they fill them?
The new tourism secretary is in Spain this week to attend the Madrid International Tourism Trade Fair, talk up the government’s tourism agenda and seek to encourage more Spanish investment in Mexico.
But while Miguel Torruco is networking abroad and painting a rosy picture of Mexico as a destination, the industry back home is bracing itself for a downturn this summer that one of its leaders attributes to the government’s decision to cut spending on marketing and disband the tourism promotion agency.
In an interview with the newspaper Milenio, Torruco said Mexico’s embassies and consulates will now take charge of promoting the country’s attractions abroad in the absence of the Tourism Promotion Council (CPTM), but declined to comment on whether the agency’s disbandment would impact negatively on visitor numbers.
Instead, he focused on touting the government’s plans for the tourism sector, placing particular emphasis on the construction of the Maya Train project that will pass through Yucatán peninsula states as well as Chiapas.
“[At the tourism fair] we will have a pavilion that represents all of the country’s states but the biggest news will be the large six-year Maya Train project,” Torruco said.
“. . . It’s a modern train that will run at between 160 and 170 kilometers per hour, it has aroused great interest, as well as in Spain,” he added.
The tourism secretary highlighted that Mexico is the sixth most visited country in the world but pointed out that tourist numbers alone don’t give a full picture of the health of the sector.
“. . . We have to take into account foreign exchange earnings. In that area, we’re in 15th place and in per-capita spending we’re 40th; that’s where you measure the tourism potential of a nation,” Torruco said.
“. . . The best position we’ve had in foreign exchange earnings was in 1994 when we were in ninth place and that will be our benchmark. The biggest challenge will be to create, form and market our tourism product so that it satisfies the needs of an increasingly demanding and knowledgeable consumer,” he said.
Asked how the Secretariat of Tourism will change under his leadership, Torruco responded that the government sees tourism as a “tool for social reconciliation.”
“. . .We’re going to consolidate what we already have and we’ll support local populations in order to avoid having tourism paradises coexisting with marginalized hellholes, to achieve that we’ll coordinate with different secretariats . . .” he said.
Torruco added that during the four days he will be in Madrid, he has meetings scheduled with Spanish businesspeople at which he will encourage them to keep investing in Mexico.
“We mustn’t forget that Spain occupies a leading position as an investor in our country,” he said.
Torruco also observed that Mexico is ranked eighth in the world in terms of hotel infrastructure.
But while there are a lot of hotels and resorts, the president of the National Tourism Business Council (CNET) fears that there won’t be enough tourists this summer to fill them.
“For summer, we could see a hit [decline] of between 20% and 30%, not just in volume [hotel occupancy] but also in economic spillover,” Pablo Azcárraga said.
“What worries me is that we have the stopped the [tourism] campaigns and the impact we’ll see [as a result] in the summer . . . We have a hotel industry with 7,000 more rooms [than a year ago] and they have to be filled. We’re already late with promotion,” he added.
Azcárraga warned that if reservations remain slow, hotel operators would likely lower rates, meaning that the benefit to Mexico’s economy will be less and Torruco’s aim to increase per-capita spending will be undermined.
“If demand goes down, the pressure we’re going to have to discount prices will be very big.”
Angry residents of Tepalcingo, Morelos, vandalized municipal police headquarters and set fire to two vehicles last night after police stepped in to prevent the lynching of suspected kidnappers.
Rumors began circulating about 8:00pm that four men who had allegedly attempted to kidnap a teenage boy were seen circulating in a sport utility vehicle in the eastern Morelos town.
After residents gathered in the town’s main square, summoned by the ringing of the church bells, they located the four men, later identified as an architect and three construction workers, and tried to apprehend them.
But municipal police intervened and took them to their headquarters for protection.
Undeterred, the mob broke into the building and vandalized the premises, but police left with the four men and moved them to another location.
The mob carried on anyway, torching police headquarters, including the armory, setting off explosions, before setting fire to a police vehicle and the vehicle in which the alleged kidnappers had been traveling.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its 2019 and 2020 growth forecasts for Mexico by a combined 0.9% today, citing lower private investment.
Mexico will see GDP growth of 2.1% this year, according to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook Update report, a 0.4% reduction on the forecast reported in October.
The IMF predicted slightly higher growth of 2.2% in 2020 but that figure is 0.5% below its October outlook.
The IMF forecast for this year is similar to the growth levels predicted by the World Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
The former cut its 2019 outlook for Mexico to 2% earlier this month, also citing lower investment as well as political uncertainty, while the latter is predicting 2.1% economic expansion this year.
The expectations are in line with an assurance given last week by President López Obrador that Mexico will grow by 2% this year after the Bank of America (BofA) halved its forecast to just 1%.
The new IMF report comes a day before the official commencement of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which López Obrador said he won’t attend because he has too much to do at home.
The IMF also trimmed its global growth projections for both 2019 and 2020 to 3.5% and 3.6% respectively, 0.2% and 0.1% below October’s projections.
For Latin America, “growth is projected to recover over the next two years from 1.1% in 2018 to 2% in 2019 and 2.5% in 2020 (0.2 percentage points weaker for both years than previously expected),” the IMF said.
“The revisions are due to a downgrade in Mexico’s growth prospects in 2019–20, reflecting lower private investment, and an even more severe contraction in Venezuela than previously anticipated,” it explained.
The Mexican peso is currently trading at just over 19 to the US dollar.
Growth forecasts for the United States were unchanged but the figures show that growth of the world’s largest economy is expected to slow.
After estimated growth of 2.9% last year, the IMF predicts that the U.S. economy will expand by 2.5% this year and just 1.8% in 2020.
Explaining the BofA cut, the bank’s chief economist in Mexico, Carlos Capistrán, said that the slow growth forecast for Mexico was 50% due to the slowing of the U.S. economy and 50% due to internal factors.
Marchers in Mexico City protest violence against women.
The Mexico City government will give panic alarm buttons to 128 women who have suffered domestic violence.
The initiative is intended to help prevent femicides, the killing of women by men on account of their gender.
The previous government purchased 1,000 GPS-enabled panic buttons for 10 million pesos (US $522,000) but didn’t distribute them, Mexico City Attorney General Ernestina Godoy said.
Each device has two buttons, one that alerts Mexico City’s C5 security command control center that the woman needs immediate help and another that allows a call to be made to a family member or emergency services.
Three seconds after the first button has been pressed, the device vibrates to notify the woman that her call for help has been received and that the closest police will be sent to assist.
Nelly Montealegre Díaz, an assistant prosecutor at the Mexico City Attorney General’s office, said that most of the women who will receive the panic buttons are aged between 30 and 40 and have suffered violence at the hands of their partners.
“They are victims of domestic violence, mainly [perpetrated by] their partners . . . In these cases, [the aggressors] . . . follow them, spy on them, call them constantly and leave threatening messages,” she said.
In some cases, the women have previously been threatened with firearms and knives, Montealegre added.
She also said that some of the women continue to live with their abusive partners.
“In some cases, they haven’t managed to get to the point of separation and that’s a decision for each of the women. We can’t force them to leave their partner, we’re working on their empowerment . . .” Montealegre said.
The official explained that the idea to distribute panic buttons to women followed a request made by a group of civil society organizations for the government to activate a gender alert in Mexico City.
Montealegre said that a date has not yet been set for the initiative to begin because preparations to ensure that it operates effectively have not yet been completed.
Between January 2012 and September 2017, there were 292 cases of femicide in the capital in addition to 421 cases in which women were murdered, according to data from the Mexico City government.
When Claudia Sheinbaum was sworn in as mayor on December 5, she said that eliminating gender violence and ensuring that justice is served in femicide cases will be priorities for her government.
Most 16-year-olds aren’t brewing their own beer, but Andrés Valverde was not just any teenager.
Now, at 24, he’s seeing his efforts pay off as his brews and distillations are being enjoyed across Mexico.
Originally from San Juan del Río, Querétaro, Valverde arrived in Mexico City on a basketball scholarship at the Tecnológico de Monterrey’s Tlalpan high school campus. He and his brother shared an apartment in Xochimilco.
Realizing that the bar was a costly place to visit for fun, he started to brew his own beer in their apartment. Now the brothers are partners in La Insoportable Cervecería y Destilería based in their hometown.
The business gets its name (it translates as “The Unbearable Brewery and Distillery”) from Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Light of Being.
Valverde’s Armónico gin. megan frye
“All the while I was learning how to brew and how to distill and deciding that is the type of career I wanted, I was reading that book over and over again because I was drawn to its philosophy,” Valverde said.
“I want all of our products to have a message, a reason for why they were made; that there is something more to it than simply being an alcoholic beverage, a beer or a gin. That it has a philosophy as to why it was made, how it was made and why these ingredients were used.”
La Insoportable is working its way into becoming a tasting room right in San Juan del Río, and Valverde says he hopes to have the doors open to the public sometime this summer. Visitors will be able to sample Valverde’s American Pale Ale and Porter, as well as his most successful commercial hit thus far, Armónico gin.
Armónico (harmonic in English) is a nod to the balance in nature that must be reached in order for survival and also to supply the 32 botanical herbs, fruits, flowers and spices that the gin is comprised of. Valverde distills the artisanal product the same way he started in his Mexico City apartment — in copper stills.
The gin is sold in 500-milliliter bottles in an effort to encourage his customers to enjoy it fully, not just chug it down trying to catch a buzz.
“We use a lot of Mexican herbs and fruits that we grow in my grandparents’ garden, such as limes and rue,” Valverde said. “We also use honey from Michoacán and cinnamon from Tabasco.”
At first, Valverde struggled with deciding which path to take after high school and considered going to a university at the behest of his parents, wavering between studying fashion design or industrial design, but he was always drawn back to the beverage world.
Beer and gin made by La Insoportable.
On a trip to visit family in Sacramento, California, Valverde’s imagination was captured by the booming business of micro-breweries and distilleries, which would ultimately inspire his plans for a tasting room.
“Every corner you turn in Sacramento, or many cities in the United States, there’s a brewpub,” he said. “A place where they have the equipment and a tasting room, and that model really caught my attention as I visited several. I wanted to do that in Mexico and saw that craft beer was starting to catch on here. We’re still behind, but it has grown a lot.”
Valverde began giving basketball lessons in Mexico City in order to save money to study distillation and brewing in Chicago. There he was able to learn more about the equipment and the process needed for beer and liquor.
At age 20, he formed his company, La Insoportable, which he now runs with his brother and two other partners.
“I wasn’t sure which liquor I wanted to focus on, but when I came back to Mexico I saw that gin had exploded in popularity,” he said. “It was never a common beverage here, and now it’s really in style. I’d already made mezcal and tequila, and we all know those are Mexican liquors that you can find anywhere in Mexico. But this country has the potential to produce all kinds of things and I wanted to do something different. That, for me, was gin.”
Valverde began to develop his recipe and found the magic balance in December 2016. The following September, he obtained permits to legally sell Armónico in bars and restaurants across Mexico.
In 2018, the company started to sell to different regions of the country, including bars in Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Los Cabos and Riviera Maya.
The focus this year is investment of time and funds into the tasting room and production of gin and other products.
“I want people to understand the process,” Valverde said. “People say Armónico is expensive (530 pesos per bottle) but that is because artisanal distillation in Mexico is very costly for producers. We’re paying the same taxes that Hendrick’s, Tanqueray, Bombay and the big companies are paying, and I started with selling six bottles per month.
“I want people to appreciate the liquid that each bottle has inside. What we’re doing is invest in the distillery so we can begin making different products like whiskey, liqueurs, rum, beers, pulques, tequino, tepache. We want to be more focused on experimenting than commercializing our products.”
Valverde says the goal of La Insoportable Cervecería y Destilería, which has seven employees including himself, is not to industrialize the product to a point where it loses quality or the essence of experimentation. Creating small batches of something new and seeing if people like it is the best way of doing that, Valverde said.
Using the garden at his grandparents’ house in San Juan del Río, Valverde plans to offer seasonal liqueurs for use in specialized cocktails, distilling with pomegranates in the summer and marigolds in autumn.
In September 2017, Armónico was selling at a rate of six bottles per month. In December 2018, that number had grown to 350. La Insoportable hopes to reach 1,000 bottles per month by the end of 2019. The biggest challenge to reaching that goal is finding a distributor to support the product.
This means that Valverde does all the distribution in Mexico City, while another employee is charged with distribution around the country. Armónico can also be purchased online at Amazon México.
Armónico is not the only artisanal gin producer in Mexico. There’s Saturnal from Guadalajara, Enmienda from Tijuana, Del Rey from Aguascalientes and Katún from Yucatán, among others.
Once the tasting room is up and running and production has increased a bit, Valverde said he would like to start a non-profit organization which would invite Mexican distilleries to work together on forming initiatives such as lowering taxes on artisanal products and making sure that bars don’t prohibit small producers from entering because of financial pressures from larger companies. Another major goal for the organization would be to create tasting events across the country.
“One of the difficulties that small producers face is that there aren’t places which allow you to be visible without paying a large quantity of money,” Valverde said. “With La Insoportable, we want to invite other brands to engage in a healthy competition, kind of what they are doing a bit right now with craft beers — but with liquor.”
Megan Frye is a writer, photographer and translator living in Mexico City. She has a history of newsroom journalism as well as non-profit administration and has been published by several international publications.
