Snow closed some highways in northern Chihuahua yesterday.
Temperatures dropped below the -15 C mark early yesterday in Janos, Chihuahua, and similarly cold temperatures were felt in at least 50 other municipalities in four states.
The cold snap was caused by the cold front No. 22 and the sixth winter storm of the season, which also delivered snow in the northern state.
Temperatures in the mountains of Bocoyna, Guachochi, El Vergel and Temósachic dropped to -8, while in the cities of Juárez and Chihuahua they were as low as -3 and -4 respectively.
At -10 C, the coldest municipality in the neighboring state of Sonora was Yécora.
Accumulated snowfall of between 20 and 36 centimeters was reported in the municipalities of Nogales, Ímuris, Magdalena, Cucurpe, Cananea, Bacoachi, Arizpe, Santa Cruz, Agua Prieta, Fronteras, Nacozari, Bavispe, Bacerac, Huachinera and Bacadehuachi.
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The army is delivering disaster relief in the affected areas.
Temperatures in the state of Durango also dropped below 0 in some areas.
Supplies and aid were sent by the state Civil Protection office to Guanaceví, where the thermometer dipped to -3, and to Canatlán.
The most punctual of the world's major airports. OAG Aviation Worldwide
Punctuality at the Mexico City airport throws into question the notion of “Mexican time.”
It is ranked one of the top five on the list of the world’s major airports for the punctuality of its flights, according to a study by a firm that monitors and analyzes aviation data.
This year’s ranking in the annual report by OAG Aviation Worldwide is four points higher than last year’s, with an 83.35% on-time performance rating.
At the top of the list of major airports, which includes those with 20,000 to 30,000 departing seats per year, was Moscow Sheremetyevo. Doha, Minneapolis and Detroit occupied the next three spots.
The analysis also examines airlines’ punctuality. Of Latin American airlines, two from Mexico were among those with the best record. Volaris and Aeroméxico placed fourth and seventh respectively.
The president cuts the ribbon at the opening of new IMSS offices in Michoacán.
Mexico will have a health care system comparable to those in Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark in two years, President López Obrador said yesterday.
Presenting the federal government’s new national health plan at an event to inaugurate new Social Security Institute (IMSS) offices in Morelia, Michoacán, López Obrador said the health system as it currently operates is rife with corruption and in a critical state.
The president, who last month announced a new integrated federal health system that will incorporate all of Mexico’s states within two years, took particular aim at the fact that some medications are not made available free of charge to patients in the public system.
“The basic table [of medications], we have to get rid of that, I’m not even going to mention it anymore. A patient must have [access to] all medications, it’s a disgrace that if a medicine is in the basic table, a patient gets it but if it’s not? 140,000 pesos [US $7,200] for a medication against cancer, where is a humble person going to get that kind of money? What are we going to do, send him home?” he said.
“We must guarantee the right to health care . . . We’re going to work for six months in the states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Tabasco, every six months more states will be incorporated [in the new health system], in order to have a system like that in Canada, the United Kingdom or Denmark, which are the best [in the world], that’s the commitment,” López Obrador added.
The leftist president, who took office on December 1 after winning last year’s election in a landslide, contended that the past government left the health care system in a worse state than the education system, of which he has also been highly critical.
López Obrador outlined the tasks his government will undertake, adding that if necessary it will open an international tendering process in order to obtain medicines at lower costs.
“The [health care] problem is so complex that it would be demagogic to say that we will resolve it this year. We have to build new health care centers, we have to finish incomplete health care centers and hospitals, hire medical personnel . . . we have to take the decision to not allow corruption in the purchase of medications and if necessary, open a tendering process to international companies, that buy medicines where they can be acquired at better prices,” he said.
The president said that in many cases politicians had become the suppliers of medications, which resulted in funds provided for their purchase being embezzled.
“That was the past, that corruption has come to an end. Nobody is going to steal the money for medicines . . .” López Obrador said.
AMLO's house in Chiapas is actually in the name of his children.
President López Obrador has formally declared his assets, but there isn’t much to declare.
His only asset is a country house in Palenque, Chiapas, but even that property is not legally his: the legal owners are his four sons. The president said he has the legal right to use and enjoy the house “until I cease to exist, that is the agreement stated in the public ownership documents of the 12,000-square-meter property.”
The president insisted that his property is not a ranch “because a ranch and a farm are a step away from being an estate.”
“I am not a rancher . . . my parents lived on the 12,000 [square] meters, but [the land] produces nothing. I have planted trees, but they are for our own use. These are fruit and timber-yielding trees,” he said.
López Obrador’s declaration of assets also states that he has neither a credit card nor a checking account.
He does have two investment accounts, valued at 446,068 pesos (US $23,000).
Also released this morning was the declaration of assets of the president’s wife, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller. One asset is a 2.7-million-peso house in which the couple live, located in the Mexico City borough of Tlalpan.
She also listed three properties in Puebla, a 2018 Volkswagen Tiguan valued at 353,000 pesos, a second vehicle worth 292,900 pesos and jewelry, paintings, sculptures and furnishings.
Value of the assets came to just over 8 million pesos.
Gutiérrez reported monthly income of 117,500 pesos, while the president earns 108,744 pesos.
López Obrador said all government employees, without exception, would have to present their declaration of assets. He said they are “honest people and their assets are the fruit of their honest work.”
More cartel secrets revealed by drug lord's son, Vicente Zambada.
Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s 2001 jailbreak in a laundry cart, a contract killing he ordered and his monthly bribery budget of more than US $1 million were among the topics jurors heard about as another cartel witness gave testimony yesterday at the New York trial of the former drug lord.
Vicente Zambada Niebla, a former Sinaloa Cartel operative and eldest son of the cartel’s current leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, strode into the Federal District Court in Brooklyn just before 10:00am Thursday dressed in dark blue prison clothes. After taking the witness stand he turned to his former boss and nodded his head.
Guzmán, wearing a dark navy blue suit, met his gaze and flashed a slight smile in return.
In testimony that lasted for more than five hours, during which he betrayed secrets of the cartel he was once groomed to lead, Zambada told jurors that Guzmán, who he referred to as mi compadre (my buddy/my son’s godfather), had described to him the anxiety of hiding in the laundry cart in order to escape from Jalisco’s Puente Grande maximum security prison in January 2001.
“It seemed like an eternity to him until he reached the last barrier,” said the witness, who is also known by the nickname El Vicentillo.
At one point, Zambada explained, a prison employee cooperating with the escape briefly let go of the cart and it started rolling backwards, sending Guzmán into a panic because he feared that he would fall out and be exposed.
Once free of the prison, the witness said, El Chapo met with his father in the mountains of Sinaloa where they reached a renewed pact to share cocaine trafficking profits 50-50.
“I’m 100% with you,” Zambada said El Mayo told Guzmán.
He told jurors that the two men shipped tonnes of drugs to the United States using cars, trains, planes and submarines for different legs of the journey.
Zambada said that he first met Guzmán when he was 15 and started working for the Sinaloa Cartel in his teens, often attending meetings between his father, fellow traffickers and corrupt officials.
“I started realizing how everything was done,” he told jurors. “And little by little, I started getting involved in my father’s business.”
In 2004, El Chapo ordered the murder of Rodolfo Carrillo Fuentes, a leader in the Juárez Cartel, Zambada said.
The Juárez Cartel collaborated with the Sinaloa Cartel to ship cocaine into the United States but after Carrillo insulted Guzmán by refusing to shake his hand at a meeting, the latter paid a sicario to have the former killed, the witness said.
“They located him in a mall,” Zambada said. “They were waiting for him to come out, and when Rodolfo Carillo came out, he was murdered by mi compadre El Chapo’s people.”
Carrillo’s wife, Giovanna Quevedo Gastélum, was also killed in the attack.
The murders led to an escalation of hostilities between the two cartels, Zambada said, telling jurors that one of Guzman’s close friends was killed at a birthday party for his father.
The former cartel logistics chief, who was extradited to the United States in 2009 and pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges as part of a plea agreement unsealed in November, told jurors that Guzmán and his father spent more than US $1 million a month to pay off police, members of the military and government officials in order to be able to move their drugs freely and to get insider information about other criminal organizations.
One army general was paid US $50,000 a month, Zambada recalled, while a military officer who once served as a personal bodyguard to former president Vicente Fox was also frequently bribed.
The witness, who hopes that he will receive a reduction to his prison sentence in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors, said that in 2007 Sinaloa Cartel leaders including Guzmán met with a group of “high-level politicians” and officials from the state oil company Pemex to discuss a plan to ship 100 tonnes of cocaine in a tanker the company owned.
Zambada said he didn’t know whether the scheme was a success. A spokeswoman for Pemex declined to comment.
When asked by the prosecution shortly after the beginning of his rambling testimony about what his father does for a living, Zambada openly admitted that he is the current Sinaloa Cartel leader.
Ismael Zambada remains on the most-wanted list of the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
El Vicentillo is the eighth criminal witness to testify against Guzmán, who is facing charges of trafficking, conspiracy, money laundering and firearms offenses. His uncle, Jesús Zambada, has also provided insider testimony about the accused’s alleged criminal activities.
The former drug lord’s defense team has attempted to portray him as a mere underling to El Mayo Zambada.
Witnesses testifying against Guzmán are “liars,” “degenerates” and “scum” who are speaking in the hope that their own prison sentences will be reduced, one lawyer said in late November.
The trial, which started in early November, resumed yesterday after a two-week holiday recess.
Vicente Zambada is expected to appear on the witness stand again today. If convicted, Guzmán faces a probable sentence of life imprisonment.
Two of the great stone balls in the Sierra de Ameca, Jalisco.
Hidden away high in the Sierra de Ameca in the state of Jalisco, buried in a great bed of volcanic ash, lie dozens of naturally formed gigantic stone balls typically measuring from one to three meters in diameter.
Geologists call them megaspherulites, but to the local people in the nearest town, Ahualulco de Mercado, they are known as Las Piedras Bola.
According to historian Sergio Sigala, some of these balls were partially uncovered by unusually strong rains in the 1960s and were first noticed by a taxi driver named Miguel Hernández. One particular stone ball gave its name to the Piedra Bola silver mine located further downhill.
In 1969, Robert Gordon, retired director of this mine, sent photos of stone balls to ethnologist and archaeologist Matthew Williams Stirling who had described spheres beautifully worked by pre-Columbian natives of Costa Rica.
In short order, more and more stone balls were found in the nearby hills, and the word was out.
In this same year an article on these natural balls of rock appeared in the August National Geographic and the Piedras Bola gained international fame. The article refuted the idea that the giant balls may have been crafted by human or alien hands and put forth the first of several scientific theories on how they came to be.
Several Piedras Bola in Jalisco.
United States Geological Survey geologist Robert L. Smith, who had led a National Geographic-Smithsonian expedition to the site in 1968, visualized the balls forming by crystallization of hot ash around nuclei of lava fragments, producing boulders of rhyolite.
In 2007 a study of the area was carried out by the University of Guadalajara (UdG), suggesting a variation of Smith’s hot-ash crystallization theory. As for the age of the balls, estimates range from 40 million years to less than ten million.
During the UdG study, 72 stone balls were located and measured and recommendations were made for development of this unique area in an ecologically friendly way. During the following two years, over 10 million pesos were spent by the Jalisco Secretariat of Culture to create infrastructure aimed at turning this remote site into one of western Mexico’s biggest tourist attractions.
For many years, the only way to reach the Piedras Bola was by walking along a six-kilometer-long footpath with a vertical difference of about 123 meters. During that long, hard hike you were likely to come across some of the 107 species of birds found in these rugged hills and perhaps spot the tracks of puma, mountain lions, wild boars or white-tailed deer — and you were frequently rewarded by dramatic views from several fine lookout points along the way.
In 2009, the path was widened, graded and turned into a drivable road. In addition, the developers had two zip-lines built along this route, one of them measuring 330 meters in length, as well as a long, wobbly 12-centimeter-wide suspension bridge which apparently could be crossed safely only by someone wearing a harness and clipped into an overhead cable.
Biggest Piedra Bola measured by author was 2.9 meters in diameter.
The road takes you to an altitude of 1,908 meters where at last you find yourself on a path that winds its ways through dozens of these venerable spheres. Most of them are barely peeking out of the ground while others are fully exposed, typically ranging in size from one to three meters in diameter.
A few are cracked in half and rumor has it that a couple were actually blown to bits when they were first discovered, in the hope that something precious might be found at their center. Broken Bolas, however, clearly indicate there is nothing different or interesting to be found at their core. Geodes they are not.
It is possible though, that the Piedras Bola are actually extra-large versions of spherulites, balls of volcanic rock often found in and around obsidian flows. While spherulites may typically be no larger than a grain of rice, in some cases they may reach the size of a soccer ball. When you break them open, you usually find a radiating fibrous structure.
An examination of cracked Piedras Bola, however, shows no radiating or concentric textures indicative of crystal growth. “There’s no texture at all,” geologist Chris Lloyd told me. “It’s just massive lapilli tuff,” leaving the exact method of their formation still unclear.
The trail winds its way through some 72 Piedras Bola, according to the University of Guadalajara’s count. If you are willing to walk another kilometer, with an altitude gain of some 60 meters, you will come to Las Torrecillas, tall columns of volcanic tuff, each supporting a single stone ball.
The 12-centimeter-wide suspension bridge.
As far as I can tell, these structures are formed by nothing more than rainfall washing away everything but the column underneath the rock.
In 2013, I offered to guide family members on a visit to the Piedras Bola. “Now there’s a road going there,” I told them. “Instead of hiking uphill for hours, panting and sweating, we can leisurely drive to the site in minutes!”
So off we went and everything looked great, although we remarked upon the narrowness of the road: “There isn’t room for two cars to pass. What happens if you meet someone going the other way?”
We passed the ziplines and the ultra-narrow suspension bridge, but found no one using them. A bit farther up we came to numerous parked cars and we soon discovered why they were there: suddenly what had been a useable dirt road turned into what looked like a minefield after the mines exploded, a collection of ruts that only a four-wheel-drive vehicle could negotiate.
We too had to turn around (no easy task on that narrow road with a 200-meter drop on one side) and find a place to park where space was at a premium. Why money had been poured into fancy ziplines instead of proper road construction we couldn’t fathom, but on this occasion, a Sunday, visitors to this extraordinary site numbered fewer than 20 people, suggesting you are never likely to find it crowded.
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Our mission that day was to search out the biggest natural ball we could find and measure it with a fiberglass tape to check on the accuracy of the previous survey. This turned out to be an easier task than I had envisioned because those few other people we found wandering around the place immediately offered to help us.
After much searching and measuring, the whole lot of us — who, by then, had become the best of friends — concluded that the very biggest ball we could find that day measured 2.9 meters in diameter.
After I bandied this number about, a local ornithologist told me “not all the Piedras Bola are up on that hill . . . for example, there are a dozen of them lying in a pasture that belongs to a relative of mine and you can drive to the place in just a few minutes.”
Sure enough, only 3.5 kilometers from Ahualulco, I found plenty of stone balls in that pasture and one which lay half buried in a nearby muddy stream looked to my now practiced eye much bigger than any I had seen “up on that hill.”
Unfortunately, the widest part of this particular ball lies underground, but we were able to measure the diameter of what protrudes from the earth and that turned out to be 3.9 meters.
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I’m not sure the local authorities will be directing tourists to that little pasture in the near future, but if the possibly four-meter-wide megaspherulite we found does turn out to be the world’s largest, I hope this time they will forget about building any ziplines along the way.
• More information on the Great Stone Balls can be found in Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume 2 and the driving/hiking route is shown on Wikiloc.
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.
Location of the Mandarina project in Riviera Nayarit.
Mexican hotel acquisition and development company RLH Properties is investing US $260 million to build two new hotel and residential complexes on the Pacific coast in Nayarit.
Both properties are within the 265-hectare Mandarina development, located on the Riviera Nayarit less than one hour north of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco.
“For both developments, we estimate an investment of approximately US $260 million . . .” said RLH general director Borja Escalada Jiménez.
One property is a luxury Rosewood hotel with 130 rooms while the other is a One & Only branded resort with 104 rooms.
Construction of the latter development is already in an advanced stage and some of its 55 private residences have already been pre-sold for prices between US $4 million and $12 million.
“The Rosewood is in an advanced design phase and it will also have residences that we haven’t yet put on the market, a polo field, an equestrian center and restaurants,” Escalada said.
Location of the Riviera Nayarit’s Mandarina project.
RLH board chairman Allen Sanginés-Krause said that the company’s current focus is on Mexico and the Iberian Peninsula.
“We don’t have a target number of properties to buy, we’ll do it depending on the opportunities,” he said.
The Mandarina development markets itself online as “an ultra-private destination” that “will immerse residents and guests in the culture of Riviera Nayarit while nurturing the warmth of a community.”
Two sculptures at the newly-discovered temple. Melitón Tapia/INAH
Archaeologists have discovered for the first time a temple dedicated to an important pre-Hispanic deity known as the “flayed lord.”
A team of archaeologists from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) uncovered the temple dedicated to Xipe Tótec – a god of fertility and regeneration – in the Ndachijan-Tehuacán archaeological zone in the state of Puebla.
The site features two sacrificial altars and three stone sculptures depicting the “flayed lord” among other architectural elements located at the base of a small pyramid. It is believed to have been in use between 1000 and 1260 AD.
Two of the sculptures represent flayed skulls, leading INAH archaeologist Noemí Castillo Tejero said, while the third is of a torso covered with the skin of a person who had been sacrificed and also features a loincloth made of feathers.
The torso “is sculpturally a very beautiful piece,” Castillo said.
“It measures approximately 80 centimeters and has a hole in the belly that was used . . . to place a green stone and ‘endow life’ for the ceremonies,” she added.
Archaeologist Castillo with one of the sculptures. Melitón Tapia/INAH
The torso has a left arm and parts of both legs, leading the INAH team to believe that they may find other detached parts of the “ritually fragmented” sculpture.
Castillo believes that each of the volcanic rock, 200-kilogram, 70-centimer-high skulls were made by different artisans due to contrasts in their features and slight variations in their size.
The rock, possibly rhyolite, is believed to have been transported to the site from elsewhere.
In pre-Hispanic Mexico, one of the most important celebrations for several cultures was known as Tlacaxipehualiztli, which means “to wear the skin of the flayed” in Nahuatl.
The festival took place on two circular sacrificial altars, such as those found at the newly-discovered Puebla site.
The temple to Xipe Tótec was found at the Ndachjian–Tehuacán site. Melitón Tapia/INAH
On one, captives were sacrificed in gladiatorial fights or by being slain with arrows while on the other, a ritual flaying of the victims occurred as a tribute to Xipe Tótec.
Priests would subsequently wear the skins of those sacrificed for a period after which they placed them in small holes in front of the altars.
Castillo said the two stone skulls the INAH team found were used to cover those holes.
All three sculptures will be subjected to in-depth study to determine their age, what kind of stone they are made of and how they were carved.
They are then expected to be placed in the archaeological site’s museum.
Castillo said it has not yet been decided whether the new discovery will be opened to the public or whether it will be covered again with earth once the INAH team has concluded its exploration.
One of the displays at the Monterrey dinosaur exhibition.
For paleontologists, Mexico is fertile ground that has yet to achieve its full potential.
But some of what has been achieved is on display at the Dinosaurs Made in Mexico exhibition at the Planetario Alfa museum in Monterrey, Nuevo Léon. It showcases some of the discoveries made over the years, especially in the northern reaches of the country.
Two people collaborated with the museum — paleontologist René Hernández Rivera and paleoartist Luis V. Rey — to bring the titans of old alive again, bridging the gap in time for the inhabitants of the same geographical region.
Hernández told the newspaper Milenio he is convinced that there exists a wealth of fossils in Mexico.
During his 40-year-career, Hernández has been involved in the main discoveries in his field, such as the 1988 expedition in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, that resulted in the assembly of the first Mexican dinosaur.
Since then, he has dedicated his career to spreading the word about the nine unique dinosaur species found in Mexico, and 20 others that, while discovered elsewhere, have close ties to the country.
Work by paleoartist Luis V. Rey.
Hernández believes there still is a lot of work to do in terms of research and public outreach, efforts that should be coupled with the fight against fossil poachers.
Luis V. Rey’s work is more interpretative than factual, because other than the fossilized bones artists like him have little more than some hints of scales, plumage, musculature and colors to imagine the true appearance of the dinosaurs.
Through collaboration with other specialists over the course of 20 years, he now offers a different picture of what dinosaurs might have looked like.
Thanks to scientific study “we observed that it was quite possible that the dinosaurs had a relationship with the birds, as has been accepted today,” said the artist and illustrator.
“Dinosaurs were not monsters,” he continued, “they were living creatures. Movies nowadays have taken advantage of scientific progress to turn them into the monstrous icons the public expects them to be, but that has got to change.”
Dinosaurs Made in Mexico includes large-scale posters of Rey’s art, as well as animatronic dinosaurs and an area where children can join an excavation site and dig for fossils.
The exhibition is located in the museum’s third floor and entrance is included in the 120-peso (just over US $6) ticket. The museum is open Tuesdays to Fridays between 2:30 and 7:00pm, and between 10:30am and 7:00pm on weekends.
Measuring noise levels on Maduro street in Mexico City.
Sanctions imposed on businesses and individuals violating noise regulations in Mexico City should be strengthened, according to an academic who argues that people have a “right to silence.”
Jimena de Gortari, professor of architecture and urbanism at the Iberoamericana University, also called on the newly-installed Mexico City government to be stricter in the enforcement of the regulations.
Fines for exceeding noise regulations range from 806 to 3,224 pesos (US $41 to $164) but less than 2% of noise complaints result in sanctions being imposed.
De Gortari argued that city authorities should carry out more frequent inspections to ensure compliance with existing regulations and impose fines without exception where breaches are detected.
“The right to silence and the right to rest have to be incorporated [in the city’s constitution] as legitimate rights of any human being . . .” she said.
Miguel Ángel Cancino, Mexico City’s environmental prosecutor, said that authorities have failed to combat the city’s noise problems, explaining that offending businesses such as nightclubs are often only given warnings of which they take no notice.
One area of the city where noise frequently exceeds permitted levels is Madero street, a pedestrian thoroughfare in the historic center.
By using a sound level meter, the newspaper Reforma found that bars and nightclubs located on the busy street were exceeding the permitted decibel levels by as much as 61%.
Between 8:00pm and 6:00am, noise regulations allow for music to be played at a maximum of 62 decibels.
Noise generated by public works, aircraft, traffic and street vendors are also frequently complained about by residents of Mexico City.
De Gortari said that Mexico’s capital is the eighth noisiest city in the world and called on the government to develop a mobile app that residents can use to report violations of noise regulations.
Noise in Mexico is a hot-button issue that often provokes vigorous debate among both Mexicans and foreign residents.
Amid a long-running dispute over noise levels in the historic center of Mérida, Yucatán, last year, a local musician and union boss suggested that expatriate residents, some of whom complained about late-night noise emanating from cantinas and nightclubs, should go home if they are not happy with the situation.
