Mushrooms are on the agenda this weekend in Guadalajara.
The fifth edition of the Guadalajara Mushroom Fair will bring together businesses, producers, academics, artists and enthusiasts this weekend for a unique celebration of the fungi.
Organizer Iván Fernández said the fair is an opportunity to educate the public about the diversity of mushroom species and help them to identify some of the species. It also gives the public access to mushroom experts and businesses at a one-of-a kind social event.
Fernández remembered that the first Guadalajara Mushroom Fair in 2015 was a mostly academic affair attended by professors and researchers from the University of Guadalajara, large producers and a few amateurs who were just starting out with small mushroom crops.
He said that since then, other towns have begun hosting their own mushroom fairs and interest has grown.
There will be several musical presentations, a fashion show, an art contest and an exhibition of mushroom art.
For the more academically inclined, the fair will include a special conference on the biodiversity of mushroom species in Mexico by Michoacán mushroom expert Horalia Barriga Díaz, as well as workshops, talks and a wide gastronomic offering of mushroom-based dishes.
For the especially dedicated who hope to get their hands dirty, the fair was to host two guided tours to collect mushrooms, one on Friday near Tapalpa and another on Saturday in the area surrounding the Tequila volcano.
The fair itself runs Saturday from noon until 9:00pm and Sunday from 10:00am till 8:00pm at the Jardín Americana.
For anyone in southern Mexico who has a beef — and there are more than a few — there are two effective ways of getting attention: set up a roadblock or take hostages.
In Chiapas last week, the National Front for Socialism (FNLS) did both.
It’s been a week since five police officers were taken captive by the organization in retaliation for the allegedly illegal detention and torture of its leader.
The state Attorney General’s Office said the five officers were detained at a blockade on the Ocosingo-San Cristóbal de las Casas highway near Río Florida on July 18. The roadblock was erected by setting fire to a stolen semi and other vehicles.
The FNLS said in a statement that theirs is not a criminal organization but rather a decades-old, grassroots political group. They said their leader, Javier González Díaz, was arrested on July 17 by state police, who subjected him to physical and psychological torture.
Vehicles burn at the National Front’s Chiapas blockade.
State authorities said yesterday that González had been arrested in connection with a violent robbery.
The FNLS said the police officers were detained when they attempted to forcefully disperse the organization’s blockade.
“They were detained for an act of provocation: they attempted to use their weapons against some of our companions during the blockade.”
According to the group’s statement, none of the five identified themselves as police, leading the organization to believe that the officers were not acting on official orders.
In response to concern expressed by the officers’ families, the FNLS wrote that the five had not been harmed.
“The agents are in our communities. They are OK, safe and sound, and waiting for us to be able to establish a respectful and unconditional dialogue with the government of Chiapas.”
In the meantime, the Attorney General’s Office said it was investigating the organization for violent theft, property damage and terrorism.
Migrants at the southern border: some are paying large sums of money to smugglers.
Migrant are paying higher prices now that Mexico has stepped up security at its borders.
Asian migrants are paying up to US $40,000 to reach the United States via Mexico, according to the newspaper El Universal, while Central Americans pay between $10,000 and $12,000.
The newspaper reported that the strengthening of security at the southern and northern borders – and increased enforcement against undocumented migrants traveling through the country – has led people smugglers to move their customers not just by land but also by air and sea.
The fees they charge have increased as a result.
Migrants hoping to reach the United States from Brazil might pay a total of $12,000 to $15,000 to leave that country and secure passage to the northern border, while Mexicans hand over between $5,000 and $10,000 to smugglers to take them illegally into the U.S., El Universal said.
Human trafficking and the smuggling of migrants has become one of the most lucrative activities for organized crime, according to a 2018 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which said that the illegal trade generated profits of $7 billion in 2016.
Ricardo Ramírez Cortés, an official in the anti-human trafficking division of the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR), said that authorities have been forced to respond to the new ways in which criminals are moving migrants.
He said that earlier this year, authorities arrested members of a criminal group at the Mexico City airport who had been transporting undocumented migrants to the northern border by air.
El Universal said that authorities have also detected smuggling people to Quintana Roo by boat. After disembarking in that state, migrants cross the country to the Pacific coast and then board another vessel headed for the California coast.
United States border patrol agents detained seven migrants and two suspected people smugglers in November last year after a small panga-style boat landed at Laguna Beach, California.
Three of the migrants were Chinese nationals and four were Mexicans, the Los Angeles Times reported. One of the smugglers was a United States citizen and the other had an expired U.S. visa, the newspaper said.
In Mexico, authorities arrested 724 suspected smugglers between 2016 and 2018 but only 63 were sentenced, statistics show.
In the same period, 3,351 migrants who either paid for smugglers’ services or were kidnapped by human traffickers were rescued by authorities.
Last month, police stopped four semi-trailers in Veracruz that were carrying close to 800 undocumented migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, while last week around 150 Central and South Americans were freed from a trailer traveling in the same state.
Federal Police Inspector Marco Vargas said that people smuggling can often turn into human trafficking, pointing out that Brazilian migrants were rescued from such a situation in Tamaulipas a few weeks ago.
Both the Mexican and United States governments are working to dismantle human trafficking rings, an official in the national security department of the United States Embassy in Mexico told El Universal.
Édgar Ramírez said that multiple agencies from both countries are working closely by sharing intelligence information that allows them to identify smuggling routes and the vehicles criminals are using.
He also said that traffickers’ finances are under attack.
The Mexican government said last month that it would block the accounts and seize the assets of the company whose semi-trailers were used to transport the almost 800 migrants to the northern border.
Ramírez said that Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security in the Unites States are providing training to authorities in Mexico to help them develop their capacity to combat criminals who smuggle both people and contraband such as drugs, weapons and cash.
However, Inspector Vargas said that even shutting down borders completely wouldn’t put an end to the illicit trafficking of people and goods.
Organized crime has the ability to mutate and criminals will always seek ways to continue their activities, including the use of sea and air routes, he said.
However, since Mexico agreed to step up the enforcement of migration policy as part of an agreement with the United States, migrant arrests have increased significantly.
An average of 1,030 arrests per day in the period was 88% higher than that recorded between January and May when there was an average of 547 arrests per day.
Locals say there are about 15 pools of boiling mud at Los Negritos.
Anywhere else, Los Negritos Lake would have been turned into a recreational area and its curative and beautifying mud pots into an expensive spa.
But in El Platanal, Michoacán, the local people seem content to keep their natural wonders as they are rather than “developing” them.
If you happen to live anywhere near Lake Chapala, you should note that Los Negritos is practically in your back yard. If you love nature, you’ll be fascinated by the strange shapes and noises of its boiling mud pots and, if you suffer from arthritis, you may find an inexpensive — albeit dirty — possible solution to your problem.
I first heard about Los Negritos from José Luis Zavala, a biologist studying the fish in the area. He explained that this lagoon is unique because it contains all the aquatic creatures that used to be found in Lake Chapala.
“Laguna Los Negritos is actually hydraulically connected to Chapala,” said Zavala, “but it hasn’t been polluted. It’s a perfect laboratory for studying what Lake Chapala must have been like years ago.”
Four friends having fun in the mud.
The lake is rumored to be 700 meters deep, but Zavala calls this a myth.
Tall shade trees and several roofed kiosks make the laguna shore an ideal picnic spot and the mud pots are located only 400 meters northwest of the lake, easy to reach on foot over perfectly flat ground.
The mud is black as black can be and the boiling pots are mostly less than a meter in diameter. So “Los Negritos” (The Little Black Ones) is a fitting name for the place. We came upon at least a dozen boiling, hissing, plopping mud pots interspersed with small bogs and occasional wallowing holes filled with cool mud that would bring joy to the heart of any hedonistic porker.
So much moisture, of course, has brought lots of birds to this area and you can see vermillion flycatchers, golden-fronted woodpeckers, house finches, egrets and if you’re lucky you may even spot a white owl.
“Lots of people have drowned in the lake,” a local rancher told us, apparently because it drops straight down from the shoreline with no shallow spots for waders. He said a few people have drowned in some of the cool mud pools whose rims look far more solid than they really are.
However, he assured us that there are great benefits from getting up to your neck in mud, particularly if you suffer from arthritis. One must, however, be careful not to confuse the cool mud with the hot sort.
Los Negritos Lake is connected to Lake Chapala, but is said to be clean.
“One of my horses sank into what seemed to be cool mud and the heat was so intense, the poor horse lost two of its hooves,” explained the ranchero.
Our informant also told us that geysers sometimes shoot several meters into the air, but when and where this might occur is impossible to predict. Finally, our rancher friend said it may be worth staying overnight among the mud pots because occasionally they produce “big green flames.”
We imagined this must refer to the legendary will o’ the wisp or ignis fatuus (fool’s fire), a ghostly light said to hover over bogs, supposedly leading one either to rich treasures or perdition. Science tells us the phenomenon is the result of gases released by decaying organic matter, an explanation that’s not nearly as much fun.
When my friend Mario Guerrero told me he was going camping at Lake Negritos, I asked him to check out those green flames. A few days later, he sent me the following message. I think it nicely captures the flavor of many weekend excursions in Mexico. Tongue in cheek, he described his trip as “nothing special or unusual.”
“You asked me how our trip to Los Negritos went and I can report that it was todo sin novedad (nothing special).
“We started out fine in the morning in two vehicles, but when we stopped to pick up our compañeros, one of the cars refused to start. However, by pushing it, we finally got it going.
The thick black mud is said to cure all sorts of ailments, especially arthritis.
“A few hours later, about half a kilometer from Villamar — the closest town to Los Negritos — my own car suddenly died. It was the gas pump — totally shot. So, we had to tow it to Villamar using my friend’s car which, unfortunately, again refused to start.
“However, we push-started it . . . and got to Villamar where we found only one mechanic and he was hopelessly drunk. However, he staggered over to my car, looked at the pump, said he could fix it, but declared that there was no way to get a new one the same day because the spare parts store was closed.
“So, we left my car . . . and told him he should fix it as soon as he sobered up. ‘Just leave me money for the pump,’ he replied, ‘and a bottle of tequila.’
“Then all six of us piled into the other car. It was pretty crowded . . . .
“Finally, we arrived at Los Negritos at 10:00pm It was so dark we couldn’t see a thing, not even the lake. All we wanted to do by then was hit the sack. We went to the first kiosk, but what did we find in the middle of it but a big coral snake about two meters long.
“. . . we chased it away, but nobody in the group wanted to sleep in that particular kiosk anymore, so we went off in the dark looking for another one. Like I said, nothing ‘unusual’ about this trip.
[soliloquy id="85060"]
“. . . we set up our tents inside the next kiosk and now it was about midnight. Then I remembered I promised to check out those mud pots for you. Well, I had the GPS coordinates, so we had no choice but to traipse off into the darkness looking for them.
“Since we couldn’t see where we were going, we ended up walking through mud so thick and sticky it soon looked like we had cannonballs at the ends of our legs. Finally, we found the mud pots, turned off our lights and discovered absolutely nothing: no green flames, no mysteries, no ghosts. In fact, once again nothing unusual.
“. . . two hours later we finally crawled into our tents — when all hell broke loose.
“A hurricane-like wind hit us and suddenly the surface of the lake was churning with monster waves. We had to jump on top of our tents to hold them down. I swear that wind was blowing over 200 kilometers per hour, but it finally weakened a bit and at last we were getting ready to go to bed when — it started to rain.
“Well, the wind was still blowing pretty hard and, therefore, we had rain coming at us horizontally. The roof of the kiosk wasn’t doing us any good at all and in a few minutes all of us and our gear were soaking wet . . . We didn’t get to sleep until 3:00am. It was just another one of those nights — nothing special at all.
“The next day we found the mechanic as drunk as ever, but the new gas pump was installed perfectly.
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“On our way home we stopped at a taco stand under a canopy and what happened? While we were eating, another sudden downpour hits us — more horizontal rain — and we walked out of the ‘restaurant’ soaked again.
“Finally, at 11:00pm we arrived home after a rather long weekend but, gracias a Dios, a weekend sin novedad, with nothing special to report.”
To visit Los Negritos — if my friend’s report doesn’t dissuade you — ask Google Maps for directions to “Lago Los Negritos, Michoacán.” The mud pots are located at N20.06285 W102.61573 and yes, you can input these coordinates into Google Maps.
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.
A large mound of foam in the Puebla irrigation canal.
Huge quantities of foam suspected to be toxic formed earlier this week in an irrigation canal of the Valsequillo dam in Puebla.
According to the environmentalist organization Dale la Cara al Atoyac, the foam began to form on July 21 near the Valsequillo dam, which is fed by water from the Atoyac river.
“Today, the problem is more than visible,” the organization wrote Monday on its Facebook page. “We demand that responsibility be taken for the critical situation of the environment, especially the Atoyac river.”
According to the newspaper Excélsior, the foam in the canal, located in the southern part of the municipality of Puebla, was created by a mixture of pollutants that are dumped into it, including heavy metals like lead and cadmium, along with solvents, paints and engine oil.
The canal also receives household organic waste, the decomposition of which releases gases that, when mixed with the other pollutants, lead to the creation of the foam.
Foam overflows the canal’s banks.
The canal provides irrigation for around 1,000 hectares of farms in 17 Puebla municipalities, including Tecamachalco, Quecholac, Acatzingo and Palmar de Bravo. The foam has reached fields in Tecamachalco, but it is not known whether there are any adverse health effects for humans from consuming food grown with the contaminated water.
There was a tragic effect on Sunday when a man attempted to take a selfie of the foam-filled canal. The 32-year-old fell into the water and drowned after he was dragged away by the current.
A woman who was with the victim reported the accident to Civil Protection officials, but a search was delayed by foam extending for more than a kilometer in the canal.
On Friday morning, the body was found in the Valsequillo drainage canal in Tecamachalco.
State police roll into Cadereyta Thursday evening.
The Nuevo León government has temporarily taken over policing duties in two municipalities plagued by violent crime.
Decrees published yesterday announced that state police would immediately assume control of Cadereyta Jiménez and Juárez for a period of 30 days, although the takeover could be extended if conditions don’t improve.
The government said that the mayors of the bordering municipalities, located on the eastern outskirts of the state capital Monterrey, requested the intervention.
There were 30 homicides in Cadereyta in the first six months of the year, an 87.5% increase over the 16 murders in the same period last year.
It was even worse in Juárez. Homicide figures surged 377% in the first half of 2019, when there were 62 homicides compared to 13 in the same period of 2018.
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Residents of both municipalities welcomed news of the state police takeover.
“It will do us good,” Armando de Léon, a member of the Cadereyta Citizens’ Council, told the newspaper El Norte.
“. . . The authorities we have here cannot combat crime, they simply don’t have enough units . . .”
Salomé Álvarez said state police should have a permanent presence in Cadereyta due to the high levels of crime.
“There is insecurity every day, bank robberies and gun violence towards people in their businesses,” she said. “It’s not a simple war between organized crime groups, citizens are being assaulted.”
Cadereyta Mayor Ernesto Quintanilla said in an interview that the municipality is short 80 police officers but added that a recruitment drive is underway.
Rubén Cantú, a hardware store owner in Juárez, agreed that support from state police is needed.
“. . . we have to go out to work, [but] you always walk with fear,” he said.
Restaurateur Alonso Cuevas said Juárez municipal police were not doing their job well and hadn’t developed a close relationship with citizens.
He expressed confidence that the security situation “can be corrected” with the arrival of state police.
Meanwhile, security authorities from Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Coahuila are meeting today to discuss security issues in the northeast of the country.
The three states signed an agreement late last month to cooperate on security matters and according to Coahuila Interior Secretary José María Fraustro Siller, the pact is already yielding good results.
No peace in the valley: community representatives sign an accord that didn't last long.
A government program to pave rural roads in the state of Oaxaca that has been promoted by President López Obrador is facing obstacles as a result of ongoing territorial conflicts.
One of the disputes has been going on for decades between the indigenous Mixe communities of Quetzaltepec and San Juan Bosco Chuxnaban in the northern sierra. It left four people dead in 2018.
However, the federal government chose Quetzaltepec to be one of the first 50 communities in Oaxaca to have its municipal seat connected by a paved road.
In order to receive the federal support, Quetzaltepec and Chuxnaban started a peace process organized by the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI).
But according to residents of the latter, the community of Quetzaltepec is not respecting the agreement, and continues to occupy the disputed area.
“It was all a show to get the paved road to the municipal seat,” one resident of Chuxnaban told the newspaper El Universal.
INPI indigenous rights coordinator Hugo Aguilar told El Universal that in addition to the Quetzaltepec case, the paved roads program has been delayed by a post-electoral conflict in San Juan Ozolotepec and a territorial dispute between Santa María Ecatepec and San Lucas Ixcontepec, both in the southern sierra.
The latter led to the murder of 13 Ecatepec residents in July 2018.
Aguilar said the goal of the paved roads program is not to heighten the conflicts but to help resolve them.
“The instructions we have are that the program shouldn’t generate more conflicts,” he said. “When we detect a conflict area, we prefer to suspend the program and start a peace process.”
This year, at least three peace agreements mediated by state and federal governments have been broken in Oaxaca.
Internet service was interrupted in many parts of Mexico yesterday after fiber optic cables were damaged by fire.
Telmex informed users late yesterday afternoon that the company had restored full internet connectivity after interruptions began to occur about 3:00pm CDT.
The company explained that the connectivity problems occurred when farmers were burning off fields in San Luis Potosí and Sinaloa, causing damage to fiber optic cables.
Mexico’s largest cities were among those most affected, including Guadalajara, Mérida, Puebla, Querétaro, Monterrey, Tijuana, Aguascalientes, Tuxtla Gutiérrez and Mexico City. Telcel customers in some regions also had problems connecting to the internet on their cellphones.
Telmex said it would take legal action against the offenders.
“Telmex will begin the appropriate legal proceedings against those responsible for disrupting the communications network and we reiterate our promise to offer the very best service to our customers.”
The practice of burning off fields was blamed for two major electricity outages on the Yucatán peninsula in March and April.
The Secretariat of the Environment (Semarnat) has granted conditional approval for the Santa Lucía airport but a group opposed to the project argues that construction cannot yet begin because other studies remain outstanding and injunctions it obtained are still in force.
Semarnat announced yesterday that it had approved the environmental impact statement for the US $4.1-billion project, which will be built by the Secretariat of Defense (Sedena) at the Santa Lucía Air Force Base in México state.
The department determined that the project will not compromise ecosystems in the area nor will it generate impacts that upset the ecological balance as long as environmental protection measures are put in place.
The authorization is valid for a period of 33 years during which four stages of the project are planned. Completion of the first stage, which will allow the airport to open, is scheduled for 2022.
Before construction can begin, Semarnat said that Sedena must prepare a range of preventative measures that will avoid negative impacts on the environment or reduce those impacts to a minimum.
They include programs to rescue and relocate flora and fauna, observe the project’s effects on birdlife, mitigate contamination of the nearby Zumpango lagoon, manage waste and monitor air quality.
To alleviate concerns that the construction and operation of the airport will threaten the local water supply, Sedena says that it will truck water in from Hidalgo during the first stage while during the latter, supply will be via an aqueduct from the Mezquital valley in the same state.
Semarnat said the defense department must also establish an environmental monitoring committee whose members will include academic institutions and state and municipal governments.
But after Semarnat’s announcement, the #NoMásDerroches (No More Waste) Collective, made up of civil society organization, law firms and more than 100 citizens, warned that environmental authorization “is only one of numerous requirements” established by the federal judiciary that must be met before construction of the airport can begin.
The group explained that 11 suspension orders against the project remain valid.
“Construction can’t be started until the safety, aeronautic viability, economic analysis, cultural [and] archaeological studies have been complied with . . .” said Gerardo Carrasco, director of litigation strategy at Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, one of the collective’s members.
The lawyer said it was unclear how long it might take for those studies to be completed.
“. . . What’s relevant at the moment is that suspensions by several courts are in force and construction of the airport can’t start even though the environmental issue has been approved. Semarnat can’t hand down rulings in other matters . . .” Carrasco said.
“We maintain that from an economic and technical point of view it’s not viable to build an airport at Santa Lucía. The most appropriate thing to protect the Mexican economy is to resume the work at Texcoco . . .” he added.
The #NoMásDerroches Collective filed a total of 147 injunction requests that could hold up or threaten construction of the new airport.
In addition to winning injunctions against the Santa Lucía project, the collective last month obtained an order that instructs federal authorities not to make any changes to the site of the partially built abandoned airport in Texcoco, also in México state.
Carrasco said at the time that “we believe that it’s legally possible to raise Texcoco again.”
Following a legally questionable public consultation last October, President López Obrador canceled the previous government’s signature infrastructure project on the grounds that it was corrupt, too expensive, not needed and being built on land that was sinking.
He says the Santa Lucía project will solve congestion problems at the current Mexico City airport more quickly and will cost much less than the previous government’s plan.
The president said today that the government will respect the legal process to have the injunctions against the project lifted but nevertheless called on the judiciary to resolve the matter as soon as possible.
“. . . Justice should be prompt . . . because we’re being held up . . . and we want to start,” López Obrador said.
“. . . Maybe what our opponents want is for us not to carry out [the project] in a timely manner but we’re going to achieve it . . [while] respecting the whole legal process.”
Protesting students with sign that reads 'Mexico lacks universities.'
At least 200 students protested Thursday night in Mexico City to demand that President López Obrador fulfill a campaign promise to abolish university entrance exams.
The protesters were members of at least three different groups of students who have been rejected by schools of higher education.
They demanded in a statement that the federal government find a solution for more than 250,000 young people who have been turned away.
“Since before his election campaign, the current president promised that his government would improve education, and that it would even eliminate university entrance exams,” read the statement. “However, today, we are facing indifference from functionaries who are refusing to negotiate with the students.”
The statement also said that government initiatives like the Benito Juárez García schools, the Rosario Castellanos Higher Education Institute and the Zero Rejects program, which will open up 51,000 spots for students in technological and private universities in Mexico City, México state, Hidalgo and Morelos, are insufficient to address the problem.
“Those schools might be a good option for some people, but they don’t cover the huge demand of more than 250,000 young people who want to get a higher education,” the statement reads. “Also, using the phrase Zero Rejects is just a media affirmation, a copy of what former administrations did, by offering scholarships for private and technical schools.”
