Orozco, left, and López Obrador present plans for the new cultural center.
A new cultural center touted as the biggest in the world will be established on a military site in Mexico City, President López Obrador announced today.
The president said that renowned artist Gabriel Orozco will direct the project in conjunction with the Secretariat of Culture and the Mexico City government.
The center will be built on an 800-hectare former military base that will become the fourth section of the Chapultepec Park.
“It’s going to be the biggest and most important artistic and cultural space in the world,” López Obrador said, adding that Orozco will not charge anything for his services.
The president said today that the government already has the resources required to build the cultural center although he didn’t specify how much it would cost.
“Not a lot of funds will be needed because the creative side [of the project] is going to be provided voluntarily,” López Obrador said.
“We’ll seek not to waste resources, it’s not [a project of] buildings that will turn into white elephants,” he added.
López Obrador said that a detailed plan of the project, including its cost and how long it will take to complete, will be presented in two or three months.
Orozco, who said in 2015 that Mexico needed a contemporary art museum of the stature of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Paris’ Centre Pompidou or London’s Tate Museum, described the opportunity to coordinate the cultural center as an “honor.”
The federal government has made a point of returning space formally occupied by the government to the people of Mexico.
The president’s former official residence, Los Pinos, has already been turned into a cultural center, and metal barricades that prevented citizens from getting close to the National Palace were removed shortly after López Obrador took office on December 1.
Protesters with a range of grievances have since established makeshift camps cheek by jowl with the facade of the National Palace, located in Mexico City’s downtown opposite the zócalo, or central square.
Dogs set off the alarm yesterday when an unwelcome visitor took an early-morning ramble in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero.
But the three-meter-long crocodile was soon captured and moved to a more suitable location.
The reptile was on the road between Playa Linda and downtown Zihuatanejo when dogs became aware of its presence and began following it. Their barking alerted nearby residents.
Civil Protection officials arrived at the scene about 7:30am to capture the potentially dangerous crocodile.
It was transported to the nearby Laguna del Negro, in Ixtapa, where it was released. There were no reports of attacks against animals or humans.
It was the second time in a month that crocodiles with wanderlust have been sighted in urban areas of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. On March 16, one that measured about four meters long was caught near the airport.
President's hope for growth is in green, actual since 2000 is in red. bloomberg/inegi
The federal government has cut its GDP growth forecasts for 2019 and 2020 but maintained its commitment to deliver surpluses in both years.
The Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) predicted in a preliminary 2020 budget document that the economy will grow by between 1.1% and 2.1% this year, down from a previous outlook of 1.5% to 2.5%.
For 2020, the SHCP forecast GDP growth of 1.4% to 2.4%, a cut of 0.7% at both ends of the range.
The department said that the downgraded economic outlooks were the result of low growth in the last quarter of 2018 that extended into the first quarter of 2019.
It hedged its projections by saying it didn’t consider benefits from higher consumer spending that could result from the government’s social programs or a growth boost that could come from infrastructure spending.
However, the SHCP didn’t forecast the size of those potential benefits.
Luis Foncerrada, chief economist at the American Chamber of Commerce México, said the SHCP forecasts are realistic and in line with those of other analysts.
However, President López Obrador said at his morning press conference today that his own government’s projections were too conservative.
“I think their forecast was too low. We’re going to grow at least by an estimated 2% this year . . . and 3% next year,” he said.
“I respect the work of the technicians, the Finance Secretariat,” the president declared before adding that growth above its forecast is “a done deal.”
López Obrador has said repeatedly that his government will achieve 4% growth during its six-year term but based on the midpoints of the latest SHCP projections, Mexico would need to grow by more than 5% annually between 2021 and 2024.
News agency Bloomberg said that is “something even the most optimistic economists don’t see happening.”
The SHCP budget document predicted that total public spending this year will be 5.68 trillion pesos (US $295.8 billion), a reduction of 121.2 billion pesos (US $6.3 billion) compared to 2018 expenditure.
The SHCP said the spending cut is consistent with lower revenue levels forecast in 2019, and a result of adjustments needed to “maintain fiscal goals and balance at Pemex.”
Public spending will rise to just over 5.8 trillion pesos next year, the department said.
The SHCP said the spending cuts will enable the government to deliver primary surpluses of 1% of GDP this year and 1.3% of GDP in 2020.
Mayor Castro was criticized by her party for planning to lease an armored GM Yukon.
The contrast between President López Obrador’s plain Volkswagen Jetta and a brand new, armored GM Yukon for the mayor of Los Cabos was too much for Morena party officials in Baja California Sur.
Alberto Rentería Santana, Morena party president in the state, said Mayor Armida Castro Guzmán’s plan to lease the vehicle for her use did not align with the president’s austerity ethic.
“It is not possible that she doesn’t understand what the fourth transformation means or that she doesn’t understand the part about austerity . . .”
He said there is often a contrast between the way party principles are practiced by state legislators and the hollow way in which they are carried out at the local level, especially in Los Cabos.
“What is most scandalous, what bothers the most and what we are not okay with is this issue of armored vehicles.”
Rentería called the criticism “common sense,” and said it did not take a specialist to understand that the lease of such a vehicle stands in contrast to a principle of austerity.
However, the rain of criticism that followed the Morena party mayor’s decision to lease the vehicle triggered a change of heart. The municipality announced on the weekend that the request for bids from suppliers had been altered by removing the vehicle from the list of 172 that Los Cabos plans to lease.
Christopher Carr examines an ancient quarry in Campeche. Nicholas Dunning/UC
United States researchers have uncovered evidence that the ancient Mayan people grew surplus crops at a site in Campeche, an indication that their economy was “much more complex” than previously thought.
A team from the University of Cincinnati (UC) in Ohio found evidence of cultivation in irregular-shaped fields that followed the paths of canals and natural water channels at Laguna de Términos, a tidal lagoon on the Gulf of Mexico coast in the municipality of Carmen.
The extensive croplands suggest that the ancient Maya were able to grow surplus crops such as cotton, which was used to make textiles that were traded throughout Mesoamerica.
“It was a much more complex market economy than the Maya are often given credit for,” said Nicholas Dunning, a UC geography professor who was part of the research team.
Archaeologists also expect to find evidence of habitation once they begin excavations.
Dunning, left, and Carr have been studying ancient Maya sites in Mexico. Joseph Fuqua II/UC Creative Services
Dunning explained that the Laguna de Términos site was first brought to the attention of researchers by local workers about seven years ago.
“A forester working in the area said there seemed to be a network of ancient fields,” he said.
“I looked on Google Earth and was like, ‘Whoa!’ It was an area in the Maya Lowlands that I’d never paid any attention to. And obviously not a lot of other people had either, from the perspective of looking at ancient agriculture,” Dunning explained.
A review of satellite images confirmed the geographer’s hypothesis that the area was covered with ancient farm lands.
“It appears they developed fairly simply from modifications of existing drainage along the eastern edge of the wetlands,” Dunning said.
“They probably deepened and straightened some channels or connected them in places, but then further expanded the fields with more sophisticated hydro-engineering.”
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Another interest of the UC researchers is to locate ancient trade routes and Mayan marketplaces in order to glean a better understanding of the ancient Mayan economy.
Christopher Carr, a UC assistant research professor, used a map created by a surveying method called Light Detection and Ranging, or LIDAR, to follow an ancient road that possibly hasn’t been traveled in more than 1,000 years.
“The road is perfectly visible on the LIDAR map but is virtually impossible to discern when you are standing right on it,” Carr said.
“There’s vegetation everywhere. But when you’ve been doing this for a while, you notice little things,” he added.
“I’ll have a LIDAR image on my smartphone that shows me where I am, but I don’t see anything but rainforest. You just walk back and forth until you can feel something underfoot and follow it.”
Dunning said that the presence of roads between ancient Mayan cities is indicative of the value that people placed on trade with their neighbors.
He also said that researchers have identified several possible ancient marketplaces using LIDAR images, explaining “we don’t know for sure that they’re marketplaces but they have an architectural layout that is suggestive of one.”
He added that the ancient Maya likely sold maize and manioc at the markets and traded textiles.
“We don’t have direct evidence of what the textiles look like in this area. But if you look at ancient paintings and sculptures, people were wearing very elaborate garments,” Dunning said.
Soil analyses in the Laguna de Términos area have also identified evidence of ancient butcher shops and stone mason workshops.
The researchers will present the full details of their findings at the annual American Association of Geographers conference, which starts tomorrow in Washington, D.C.
Cuauhtocho, an archaeological site in Veracruz that received no visitors last year.
Some of Mexico’s archaeological sites are littered with garbage, defaced with graffiti and in various states of deterioration, which probably explains in part why they see few visitors.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which has 171 sites in its care, has reported that four significant sites received no visitors last year and that 16 others saw fewer than 1,000.
For the fourth year in a row, Cuauhtochco in Veracruz, a thriving city 1,400 years ago, received no visitors. Ocoyoacac in México state, an important ceremonial center between the years 450 and 650 AD, was similarly unpopular last year.
Teopanzolco in Morelos, a site with a large pyramid topped with a temple dedicated to Tláloc and Huitzilopochtli, the Mexica gods of rain and war respectively, remained closed to the public in 2018 because of damage sustained to the site during the September 2017 earthquake and the discovery of a new temple.
Chiapa de Corzo in Chiapas, a site with structures from several pre-Columbian cultures dating as far back as 750 BC, including temples, terraces and what archaeologists think might be Mesoamerica’s oldest tomb, also went unvisited in 2018.
Lack of personnel may be the reason for many sites being virtually abandoned, suggested a report in the newspaper El Universal.
INAH director Diego Prieto acknowledged last month that the institute, rather than creating new jobs, has terminated 850 positions in the last 15 years.
Medical supplies are running short at 11 Chihuahua hospitals.
At least 11 Chihuahua hospitals are short of medicine and medical supplies, according to a state government report that says that the shortages have worsened in some health care facilities since the first quarter of 2018.
The report doesn’t specify what medications and supplies are currently lacking but when overall inventories were better a year ago, there was a dearth of ketorolac, insulin, ampicillin, paracetamol and chloramphenicol, among other drugs.
Hospitals also lacked basic supplies such as bandages, gauzes, catheters and urine drainage bags.
Sofía Calzadilla, leader of the Chihuahua Institute of Health union, confirmed that the shortage of such medications and supplies persists.
Calzadilla said that Chihuahua Health Secretary Jesús Enrique Grajeda told her that medication supplies will return to optimal levels in May after authorities take possession of new purchases.
However, there is no certainty when the same will occur for essential medical materials.
The regional hospitals in Delicias and Ciudad Jiménez and the women’s hospital in Parral are all operating with a lower supply of medicines and supplies than they had a year ago.
Several hospitals in the state, including the children’s hospital in Ciudad Juárez, have staged work stoppages in recent weeks to protest against the lack of essential healthcare supplies.
Morena party state Deputy Benjamín Carrera Chávez has called on the Chihuahua auditor’s office to conduct a special investigation.
According to a report in the newspaper El Diario, the scarcity of medicine and supplies has been exacerbated because the state government owes suppliers between 300 and 400 million pesos (US $15.6 million to $20.8 million).
A long line of trucks waits to cross the border between Juárez and El Paso.
United States President Donald Trump hasn’t yet closed the border with Mexico as he has threatened, but travelers are experiencing delays at some ports of entry as a result of a decision to redeploy U.S. border officials.
Texas broadcaster KRGV reported that both motorists and pedestrians going to and from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas are noticing longer wait times at international bridges, and long lines have also been reported at border crossings between Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, and El Paso, Texas.
The delays follow a decision by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to withdraw personnel from official border crossings to help process an influx of mainly Central American migrants.
“Nationwide, CBP had more than 12,000 migrants in custody this week. The agency considers 4,000 to be a high number of migrants in custody and 6,000 to be a crisis level. More than 12,000 migrants in custody is unprecedented,” the department said in a statement Wednesday.
CBP explained that up to 750 officers from ports of entry will support Border Patrol with care and custody of migrants. The shifting of resources and personnel will have “a detrimental impact” at all southwest border ports of entry, the department said.
“CBP will have to close lanes, resulting in increased wait times for commercial shipments and travelers.”
At 7:30pm yesterday, the bridge between Donna, Texas, and Río Bravo, Tamaulipas, only had two lanes open to traffic, KRGV said.
One motorist said he barely moved half a mile in three hours waiting to cross the border.
About 25 kilometers to the east, a woman said she waited for two hours yesterday morning on the Progreso-Nuevo Progreso International Bridge, while a Reynosa man said it took him double the usual time to walk across the border to McAllen, Texas.
From 5:00am today, long lines of motorists were observed in Ciudad Juárez crossing two bridges into El Paso, the newspaper El Diario de Juárez reported. Wait times were as long as two hours and 15 minutes.
This afternoon, hundreds of trucks were stranded in the Chihuahua border city.
Juárez Mayor Armando Cabada said that US $5 million worth of exports cross into the United States via the city’s border crossings every hour and therefore any delays at the border are costly.
Cabada was expected to meet with CBP officials this afternoon to discuss the border congestion issue.
The mayor also said that if the border were to close completely, as Trump has threatened on Twitter and at rallies in recent days, the effect on the economy would be “extremely serious.”
The everyday lives of Juárez residents would also be disrupted, Cabada explained.
Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastélum, an outspoken critic of illegal immigration, said a border closure was a “terrible possibility” and urged the federal government to do whatever is necessary to solve the migration problem.
On the other side of the border, Britton Clarke, president of the Washington D.C.-based Border Trade Alliance, urged the CBP to reconsider its redeployment decision.
“The trade community understands the difficult decisions our border agencies must make as they strive to achieve the careful balance between facilitation and security. Increased migrant flows only make that challenge more complex,” she said in a statement.
“We are, however, deeply concerned over the announcement by Customs and Border Protection that the agency will shift up to 750 CBP Officers away from ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border . . .” Clarke continued.
“Reassigning resources from the border is the wrong move. As the agency itself acknowledges, this will result in lane closure and delays. Those delays will disrupt trade flows, increase shipping costs, and risk a drag on the U.S. economy.
We strongly encourage the Department of Homeland Security to deploy resources from other parts of the department to support Border Patrol during this time of increased migrant flows.”
A Mexico City VW bus fanatic offers roadtrips and even weddings in the iconic van.
It’s strange the things that make us nostalgic. Ordinary things from the past suddenly feel magical looking back. For me it’s listening to records in my parents’ living room and having summer cook-outs; for Jorge Reich, it’s VW buses.
Jorge’s father bought a 1974 white and orange Volkswagen Hightop before he was born. He named it Matilda. The family had taken trips aboard a VW bus before, but this was the first time that they had their own.
It would begin a long obsession for Jorge’s father that trickled down into the psyche of his son and wouldn’t let him rest until he had his own Matilda almost 40 years later.
Trips on the bus, in Mexico called a combi, were some of the happiest times for the Reich family. Jorge is particularly fond of reminiscing about their marathon trip to Quebec, Canada.
“It was the summer of 1984. I was eight years old and we traveled from Mexico to Quebec in 10 days. We visited Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and Niagara Falls and then on the way back we went slower and saw New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and a bunch of the other cities in the U.S.”
Matilda 70’s VW van, called La Chata. jorge reich
“That trip changed my life. I remember loving the road so much. My dad would talk to me while he drove about what you needed to know to drive a combi – the air, how to pass, how to break with the motor. All the tricks.”
Today we are gliding down the highway in his own 1990 VW bus, a “luxury edition” when it came out because of the air conditioning.
“But 30-year-old air conditioning now? If I put it on we’ll never make it.”
Not that we need it. We are headed out of Mexico City on a bright, beautiful 24 C day, the everyday perfect weather of this part of Mexico. This is the fourth bus that Jorge has bought since he purchased his first in 2017.
She was a 1970 German Westy and he named her Matilda 70. Two others he sold at U.S. auto shows and the original Matilda is stored at his mom’s house for their yearly family camping trip. This bus, called La Chata, is what Jorge uses for weddings when he converts the bus into a mobile photo booth.
Despite all his projects, what he really wants is to get back on the road and so he’s decided to start taking tourists on vintage-style road trips in and around Mexico City — you bring your itinerary (or he can suggest one) and he’ll take care of the rest. We are taking the inaugural trip to the monarch butterfly sanctuary a few hours from here in Valle de Bravo.
I attest to the relaxation of having someone else drive and figure out the directions while I am free to just sit back and enjoy the scenery, and the bus is extremely comfortable for being 30 years old!
Part of the joy of sitting up front in a VW bus is that you have this incredible wide-angle view of the countryside. We pass miles of sunflowers with their heads turned to the sun, acres of flower greenhouses growing cut flowers for the Mexico City market, and loop through pine forests with hushed, needle-covered floors, dappled in sunlight.
The Piedra Herrada Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary is located about 20 minutes from Valle de Bravo, a small Pueblo Mágico often used as weekend getaway by residents of the capital. In January, February and March the monarchs arrive after their own three-month “roadtrip” from Canada and the northern United States.
Their journey has gotten harder as time goes on. Destruction of habitat along the way and in Mexico due to illegal logging and farming, the use of pesticide-resistant GMO crops (meaning farmers can more easily spray for weeds like milkweed, the main food source of monarch caterpillars), and rising global temperatures that force butterflies farther north in the summer, make their already life-risking journey even harder.
The 700 members of the San Mateo Almomoloa community that run Pierda Herrada have the responsibility of ensuring that at least in the sanctuary, no one is doing anything that would threaten these precious visitors.
Our local guide tells us as we hike the two kilometers to the top of the sanctuary that the butterflies travel around 200 kilometers a day as they fly from Canada to Mexico starting in September. The generation that we are about to see lives the longest (about eight to nine months) in order to make the entire trip from Canada to Mexico and back to Texas to lay their eggs.
A Matilda 70 VW wedding.jorge reich
One-third of the group will die along the way from the rain and smog and colliding with vehicles. Once they arrive they spend three months recovering, drinking water, feeding on flowers and resting. In February they begin to mate.
At the top of the trail the scene is undescribable. Butterflies are everywhere, convulsing on the ground in the throes of mating, alighting on the mountain wildflower for a sip of nectar and once in a while, when something spooks them, flying up en masse, covering the sun in a blanket of orange.
Monarchs have been taking this trip for centuries and follow an ancient path to their wintering sites each year. Because generations die throughout travel, their directional precision is not something that is taught to children by parents, it’s something instinctual in their very fiber.
Scientists still don’t know exactly how they do it but believe that it has something to do with the magnetic pull of the earth. Ciro, our guide, says that some believe they leave a residue from their feelers that helps the next generation find their way.
No one knows, but each year they majestically arrived to huddle up in two hectares of forest outside Valle de Bravo.
While the butterflies themselves are not considered endangered, their migration most definitely is. They are one of the world’s great pollinators, especially because certain flowers require the long proboscis of the butterfly in order to be pollinated.
A complex web of ecological interdependence means that the loss of the butterflies could have frightening consequences for many species. These butterflies will also become a thing of nostalgic memory if we don’t protect them.
As we get back on the road with our dust-covered feet and legs, Jorge slows the bus down even further to get a look at the last lingering orange and black wings floating across our path. I wish we could travel alongside them on their cross-continental trip.
We silently wish them well on their journey and continue on with ours.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer based in Mexico City.
