Emergency personnel at the scene of the explosion.
A fireworks explosion yesterday in Querétaro killed five people and injured 55 others, while a 10-meter castillo in México state fell and injured four spectators at a festival on Sunday.
Early yesterday in Fuentezuelas, Tequisquiapan, residents had gathered in the town’s church to celebrate the Virgin of Guadalupe when 11 kilograms of fireworks exploded.
Panicked citizens ran from the scene to escape the exploding rockets but many were unable to get away and suffered burns of varying degrees.
Two of those killed were children.
Municipal authorities conducted an operation in September to crack down on the illegal sale of fireworks. After yesterday’s explosion, they seized more than 4,600 rockets that were being stored in Fuentezuelas.
Late Sunday, meanwhile, a castillo, or castle, a common element of a fireworks display, fell just after it was lit on the esplanade across from Zumpango municipal headquarters.
The structure had been tied to a pole for support but fell regardless into a crowd of hundreds of people who had gathered for Immaculate Conception festivities.
Of the four people hurt, two were reported in serious condition.
Federal judges demonstrated publicly for the first time ever yesterday to accuse President López Obrador of attempting to interfere in the judiciary and to reject his claim that they earn up to 600,000 pesos a month (US $29,500).
More than 1,400 judges at 30 locations in 25 states participated in the protest to defend the independence of the judiciary.
Luis Vega Ramírez, president of the National Association of Federal Magistrates and Judges, said in Mexico City that the government has presented a “false discourse” that judges are “privileged” and live off an “abuse of public funds.”
The 600,000-peso figure cited by López Obrador is “not even close to reality,” he added.
At a press conference yesterday morning, the president described salaries earned by judges and other high-ranking officials as “exaggerated and offensive.”
López Obrador has long pledged to slash the salaries of public officials, declaring often that “there can’t be a rich government with a poor people.”
Lawmakers from the president’s Morena party presented a bill that was approved by Congress last month that decreed that no public official should earn more than the president, who has set his monthly salary at 108,000 pesos (US $5,300) – 60% less than the former president’s wage.
But the Supreme Court (SCJN) ruled Friday that the Federal Public Servants Remuneration Law must be suspended, stating that it would cause “irreparable damage.”
Vega told reporters gathered on the steps of the Federal Palace of Justice that López Obrador and his allies in Congress have presented their salary proposal and a plan to rotate judges to different courts around the country to avoid corruption as “modernizing exercises” that will save citizens money and make the provision of justice more efficient.
However, he charged that the real intention is to “weaken the system of checks and balances in our democracy and to violate the rule of law.”
He declared: “In an authentic regime with a division of powers, in a strengthened democracy, such as the one that allowed this change of course, docile judges don’t fit. [We’re not at] the service of anyone. Wage irreducibility is not a privilege but rather one of the various guarantees of independence of the judiciary.”
Vega argued that the attack on judges didn’t just harm them but society and its institutions.
“The risk of maintaining smear campaigns against judges, making them appear as opportunists only looking for personal gain, [results in] a weakening of citizens’ confidence in their own institutions,” he said.
“What we propose is dialogue, coordination and understanding between powers within the framework of exclusive, autonomous and independent powers created by the constitution for each of the organs of public power. The people deserve and demand that [the executive and legislative powers] act within the rule of law,” Vega said.
“We can’t call a country democratic where there is no counterweight of powers . . . A judge must be silent and prudent in his public life. However, we are here in an unprecedented way today, confirming our commitment to the law and the constitution . . .” he added.
On Twitter, the Supreme Court also rejected the president’s salary claim and linked to a publication in the government’s official gazette, which outlines judges’ pay structure.
“We reiterate that it is false that anyone in the PJF [federal judicial power] earns [a salary] even remotely close to 600,000 pesos a month,” the court said.
A table in the gazette publication shows that the 11 Supreme Court judges earn a monthly salary of 269,215 pesos (US $13,265), or 3.23 million pesos (US $159,000) a year.
However, they also receive bonuses and danger money that increase their annual salary to just under 4.23 million pesos. Other federal court judges receive lower salaries.
But López Obrador has said that many public officials, including judges, receive bonuses and other benefits that are hidden from the public.
Implementing a range of austerity measures and eliminating corruption are central to the president’s agenda and are needed to free up resources to pay for the government programs and projects he has announced.
At today’s morning press conference, López Obrador once again criticized the high salaries of judges, declaring that “only Donald Trump earns more than the president of the Supreme Court.”
He said that he would respect the court’s ruling to suspend the remuneration law but characterized it as unfair.
“. . . It’s a matter of principle, that’s why there was a change [in government]. It’s not like I arrived [to power] and it [suddenly] occurred to me to reduce the salaries of high-ranking officials, people knew it, I said it in all the squares.”
Authorities are searching for a Canadian woman who had been vacationing in Los Cabos but has not been seen since December 4.
Christine St-Onge, 41, of Laval, Quebec, traveled to Mexico with a friend on November 29. They were due to return December 6.
But St-Onge’s companion returned a day early and was found dead the following day. Quebec police said he committed suicide.
Canadian police and Mexican authorities are now looking for St-Onge, who is described as having blonde hair and blue eyes, is five feet four inches tall and weighs 122 pounds.
The Jalisco government has announced that more than 3.4 billion pesos (US $167.4 million) will be spent to clean up the heavily-polluted Santiago river.
The day after he was sworn in as governor, Enrique Alfaro Ramírez told reporters gathered at the river’s contaminated Juanacatlán waterfall on Friday that six state secretariats would contribute to the massive clean-up task.
Federal authorities will also contribute funds to the efforts.
“This is the first public commitment that the government of Jalisco has taken on. I was here during the campaign and in front of the residents of Jalisco I pledged that our first act in office would be to present a comprehensive clean-up strategy for the Santiago river basin,” Alfaro said.
“The state government can’t solve the problem on its own, it can’t be dealt with just with new laws [implemented in] an isolated manner. It’s not an issue that only has to do with the quality of the water, [it requires a] response across sectors that involves health, education and infrastructure,” he added.
The governor described the condition of the river as “one of the most shameful examples [of environmental abuse] of recent decades,” charging that “we have all failed” the waterway.
The severe pollution of the Santiago river, which flows through 17 Jalisco municipalities, is obvious to anyone in its vicinity.
White foam, a greenish tinge to the water and an offensive stench are common characteristics of the 562-kilometer long river, which originates in Lake Chapala and empties into the Pacific Ocean 16 kilometers northwest of San Blas, Nayarit.
Patricia Martínez, a lawmaker who will head up the agency responsible for overseeing the massive clean-up task, said that as many as 1,000 factories dump contaminants into the river, placing the health of half a million people at risk. Farms located nearby also contribute to its pollution.
To tackle the problem, Water Management Secretary Jorge Gastón González said the government will have to rehabilitate 40 water treatment plants and build 14 new ones at a total cost of just over 2.5 billion pesos (US $123 million).
A range of other measures will be implemented at the municipal level to clean up the river and lawmakers at both state and federal level are pushing to significantly increase the penalties imposed on those found to be contaminating waterways.
Alfaro said that state authorities will also seek to increase vigilance of the river as there are currently only eight environmental inspectors dedicated to the task in all of Jalisco.
“This [pollution problem] doesn’t require a Band-Aid solution . . . We’re going to introduce an investment program worth billions of pesos, it’s as simple as that,” the governor declared.
Underwater cave systems around Tulum, through which the Maya Train will run.
Construction of the Maya Train on the Yucatán peninsula poses environmental risks to the region’s underground water networks and the long-term survival of the jaguar, experts have warned.
The 1,500-kilometer railroad, which will link cities in the three Yucatán peninsula states as well as Tabasco and Chiapas, has been rejected by indigenous communities but its construction was confirmed following a public consultation last month that found just under 90% support for the project.
The Sac Actún underwater cave system and the Dos Ojos system in Tulum, Quinana Roo – which together form the world’s largest cave – are among the subterranean bodies of water that could be adversely affected by construction of new railway tracks.
Experts also warn that the land above the aquifers may not be able to support the weight of the tracks and passing trains.
“These aquifers make up one the biggest fresh water storage areas on the planet; they’re of great importance to the ecosystem because a lot of tree roots are nourished from the water. In addition, they’re vital for the whole jungle and the present and future of the entire [Yucatán] peninsula,” said Francisco Remolina, a former director of the Yum Balam Natural Protected Area (ANP).
Arturo Bayona, the scientist who was in charge of carrying out the environmental studies for the ambitious mapping venture known as the Great Mayan Aquifer (GAM) project, said there is a risk of fissures opening up if the railroad is built where there is only a thin layer of karst – an area of land made up of limestone.
“Soil surveys are fundamental because you need to ensure that the rock layer is strong enough to, firstly, support the weight of the train and later, the vibration it causes when it passes,” he said.
Emiliano Monroy, a hydrogeologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, United States, is also concerned about the potential impact of train vibrations.
“Some cave systems are very unstable, we don’t know whether there is a two-tonne rock beneath the track or one that could easily be displaced. You also need to consider that vibrations will be generated for years and that could accelerate the natural process of collapses,” he said.
GAM project director Guillermo de Anda said it is essential to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the land on which the Maya Train is slated to run before any construction work begins.
“First recommendation: if something is going to be built, you have to be sure that the ground is appropriate and take into account that you shouldn’t drill down too deep. The ideal route [for the train] would be that which least endangers the karst areas and the subterranean areas in accordance with a formal study that determines the porosity, structure and strength [of the land] . . .” he said.
The experts say that land where there are already tracks that the Maya Train intends to use must also be evaluated.
“When those tracks were built we had no idea about the peninsula’s subsurface structures, its geological structures. How do we know if that leg [of the route] crosses a 200-meter-wide cavity or several cenotes [water-filled sinkholes]?” de Anda asked.
Monroy said that carrying out the studies required would take “at least a year,” a timeframe that would stymie President López Obrador’s plan for construction to start this month.
Bayona said that construction of the stations for the new railroad is also a cause for concern, pointing specifically to the pressure thousands of passengers will place on sewage systems.
“Where is the wastewater, generated by thousands of [train] users, going to go?” he asked.
Remolina, who is now a member of a wild cats conservation group, said the planned route of the railroad would also affect areas where many of Mexico’s dwindling population of jaguars live.
Building the Maya Train rail line is akin to putting up a barrier that will limit jaguars’ home range within which they hunt, reproduce and raise their young, he said.
“If we put up a ‘wall’ that restricts the jaguar from passing from one side to the other, we’re going to bring about [a situation] in which these animals can’t . . . reproduce with individuals that are genetically a little bit more removed from them, we’ll deny them the chance of having greater genetic variability with which to ‘nourish themselves,’” Remolina said.
“Barging in on the jaguar’s home range would cause, in the future, consanguinity. Little by little, we could edge towards [a situation] in which they have less chance of survival,” he added.
De Anda said that the experts’ views didn’t amount to a complete rejection of the 120 to 150-billion-peso (US $5.9-billion to $7.4-billion) project, which is designed to boost the economy in the southeast of Mexico, but rather as a reminder that utmost environmental care must be taken.
“If it’s a social benefit program, we can’t oppose it being done. But we can . . . demand that it be done in an orderly way and, above all, that it be supported by science . . . Obviously, any project in an area as sensitive as Tulum makes certain places vulnerable. That’s why we have to be extremely careful,” he said.
The word an-thro-po-MOR-phism refers to attributing human motivation to animals and things like furniture, rivers and coleslaw.
To many people this definition might be puzzling, convinced as they are that their furry friends are motivated by the same emotions we humans experience. “Woofie is a member of our family!” they gush about their mutt or purebred. “Oh, Meowie is my baby,” we hear time and time again about someone’s — yeah — cat.
No dictionary I’ve found has a note appended to this definition of anthropomorphic, such as “A prevalent belief in places like San Francisco or San Miguel de Allende,” but they should have.
I love San Miguel and have loved it since the first time I visited here, around 1961. At that time there was one car, one taxi and one burro to be seen in the center. There was probably one dog too, though I don’t recall seeing it in my four days at the Quinta Loreto.
Now, nearly 60 years later, it feels like there are more cars, cats and dogs in SMA than people. In my colonia, dogs roam as freely as sailors ashore on holiday. Whenever I’d see a dog I’d do my Cirque de Soleil improv of finding a brick wall or telephone pole to scale, or leaping on to a parked car, as I screamed like an opera diva with her wig on fire.
I realized early on that this behavior was causing me not only emotional distress but bodily harm as well, and that something had to be done. So I did it. I stopped leaving the confines of my house. As the Ink Spots sang in the 50s, “Don’t get around much anymore.”
Of course I miss the Parroquia, and the Jardín and Parque Juárez and feasting at Hidalgo 50 on their delicious salmon. But truly, “Vale la pena,” as Mexicans say. It was worth the sacrifice no longer having to dread cardiac arrest or a stroke every time my feet hit the pavement.
Apparently I’m not the only one who’s noticed the societal change that has elevated pets to the status of people (sort of like the way a worm morphs into a butterfly). If you research why this phenomenon has occurred and keeps escalating, you’ll find pages and pages on Google with headings like these:
These are only a few examples. You could spend all day reading these articles, as well as heartbreaking stories of infants and children mauled to death by “man’s best friend,” around 2,000 yearly.
I’ve also noticed that while no one so much as blinks if you suggest nuking a Hollywood celebrity or D.C. politician, or declaring that you hate babies or welfare for the blind, only imply thatyou hate dogs and you’re automatically put into a category with serial killers, pedophiles and people who eat their young. Don’t believe me? Just try it.
I’m a person who has never once harmed an animal, but neither have I ever had so much as a glimmer of affection for one, going back to childhood, when my father utterly failed to find an animal I could tolerate being in the same county with.
Just for fun, try this hypothetical with me. You’re a young woman who tells your mom you’ve fallen in love. “What’s he like?” she inquires. “Well,” you say, “his nose is always wet and cold, he sheds hair constantly and slobbers slimy strings of saliva on to sofas and stuff, he loves to lick his own testicles and any others he can sniff out, and he’s always up for a snack of fresh feces, his own or anyone else’s, so long as it’s homemade.”
Can you imagine your mom responding with “He sounds fabulous! Could you bring him over for dinner on Sunday, d’ya think?” Might you find Mom’s response a tad, ummm, counterintuitive, shall we say?
But this is the situation that prevails. Dog licks toilet bowl, then dog licks baby’s little pink face. How precious (albeit unhygienic).
Okay, reader, you believe I’m the quintessential monster, don’t you? I won’t even waste your time or mine describing how much I adore babies. But before you tar-and-feather or burn me at the stake, check out the 61 videos on YouTube with the title I Hate Dogs. I might just have found my soulmate in this guy . . . .
The writer is an occasional contributor to Mexico News Daily.
The airport at Huatulco where a Canadian traveler claimed he was held.
A story published by a Canadian radio station — and picked up by Mexico News Daily — about a traveler who had to pay a bribe at the Huatulco airport has been refuted by airport officials.
The airport released a statement after the story appeared on the CJFC Today website, based in Kamloops, British Columbia, to deny details of the story.
Traveler Dennis Karpiak, a retired Kamloops physician, had told a reporter in a videotaped interview that he was pulled from a lineup at the airport last week and then held for several hours in an office until he paid several hundred dollars in bribes to obtain the release of himself and three others.
He claimed that the men who detained the passengers shouted at them in Spanish, scaring Karpiak into thinking he would “end up in a Mexican prison or dead.”
The airport’s statement said Karpiak had either lost or forgotten his visitor permit so he was taken by an immigration agent to an office of the National Immigration Institute within the airport to complete the documentation required before he could leave the country.
But Karpiak, the airport official said, became upset after waiting for 15 minutes outside the immigration office. Inside, agents were busy dealing with “a delicate situation” of a newly-arrived passenger who had no documentation.
When Karpiak pulled money from his pocket to resolve the matter, “desperate” over the wait, an agent decided to simply provide him with an exit permit — which has no cost — and forgo the visitor permit.
The airport said an airline official and an immigration agent accompanied Karpiak for the entire time while they resolved the issue of the missing documentation.
“The passenger was never in danger nor was he held inside any airport office,” the statement said, observing that the events were reconstructed by reviewing surveillance camera footage.
CJFC pulled the story without explanation on the weekend so Mexico News Daily did the same, there being no other source for the story. The radio station did not respond to an invitation to comment.
López Obrador waves to spectators yesterday in Dos Bocas, Tabasco.
The federal government will invest an additional 75 billion pesos (US $3.7 billion) in the state oil company to confront the “severe crisis” of declining oil production, President López Obrador said yesterday.
The government, which took office on December 1, plans to direct the money towards modernizing the six existing Pemex oil refineries and building a new one for US $8 billion in Dos Bocas, Tabasco, where the new president announced the extra investment.
“We’re going to increase the investment by 75 billion pesos and I’m sure that it will be enough because it’s not money that has been lacking, the problem is that there has been too much corruption, examples abound,” López Obrador said.
The additional funding will come from savings stemming from the implementation of government austerity measures, he explained.
Mexico’s first leftist president in a generation said the tendering process to build the new refinery will begin by March at the latest, and defended the location chosen for the project.
“Let me clear it up because there is a lot of misinformation: why did we decide to build the refinery in Dos Bocas? Because it’s the most important [oil] terminal in the country, around 1 million barrels arrive daily at this maritime terminal, everything that’s produced off the coast of Tabasco arrives at this terminal,” López Obrador said.
“[The refinery] is going to be built here because [the oil] is going to be processed here, it’s going to be turned into fuel, it’s the best place, it’s not a political matter, it’s a technical matter . . .” he added.
Pemex is currently producing fewer than 1.8 million barrels of crude per day and is on track for its 14th consecutive yearly decline.
But López Obrador said that by 2024, the last year of his six-year term, production will rise “realistically” to 2.4 million barrels per day.
The new refinery will be built on 566 hectares of federal land and have the capacity to process 340,000 barrels of crude a day, the president said. A pipeline will connect the refinery to the Dos Bocas port.
López Obrador has been highly critical of Mexico’s need to buy fuel from abroad due to declining production and yesterday questioned once again the logic of the situation.
“How do we respond to that absurdity that we are dedicated to selling crude oil and buying gasoline, as if we sold oranges and bought orange juice?” he asked.
“In three years we will be producing the gasoline that we consume in the country, so that we can lower the prices of the fuel,” López Obrador declared.
The president was also critical of the past government’s energy reform, which opened up the sector to foreign and private companies for the first time since former president Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized all petroleum reserves in 1938.
Foreign investment totaled just 2.5% of the amount Pemex has invested over the past four years, he said.
The president hinted that Mexican companies would carry out the modernization of the six existing refineries, stating that “we’re going to place our trust in Mexican entrepreneurialism.”
However, the news agency Bloomberg reported that Ica Fluor, a joint venture between Mexico’s Empresas ICA SAB and Fluor Corp. in the United States, as well as U.S.-based Bechtel, have expressed interest in the tender process to build the new refinery.
Energy Secretary Rocío Nahle said that Mexico will import 80% of its gasoline needs this year because the refineries are only working, on average, at 38% capacity.
“The objective of the new refinery at Dos Bocas . . . is to contribute to energy self-sufficiency, maximize the social and economic benefit [of Mexico’s oil and] boost development in [Mexico’s] southeast . . .” she wrote on Twitter.
Across the edges of 47 books, a perfect reproduction of the Palacio Nacional, or National Palace, is formed. The colors are slightly different, depicting the palace in blues and grays rather than the traditional brown and red, but every window is marked out, every space between the windows is measured.
The creator of this impressive and captivating screen print is a British artist known as The Soft City, or Daniel Speight to his friends. Speight’s art, which varies in form and format, has one thing that unites it. Books.
Speight’s love of books began with the humble Yellow Pages that would be delivered to his house in Southampton in the south of England when he was a child.
“The telephone directory would arrive, and I would be so excited,” said Speight. “I would look through at people’s names and wonder who they were and what their story was.”
Speight, who would be diagnosed with dyslexia in his 20s, was never a huge fan of academic work, always favoring and excelling in the arts. However, his art has always involved books in some way.
The artist in front of his mural in the Roma Norte neighborhood.
After thumbing through the directories lost in the stories of the lives within them, he soon started to draw on the edge of them creating scenes that ran through the pages. Scenes that perhaps brought to life the stories running around in his head.
Following his love of art, Speight studied for a degree in printmaking at the University of Portsmouth, before going on to teach the art form at university level. It was during his time teaching that he began to screenprint on books, preferring the challenge of the uneven textures to that of simply screenprinting on flat surfaces.
His work then took him to London, and the streets of East London inspired him further.
“All the streets I was walking around in Hackney just looked like books,” Speight told Mexico News Daily, clearly recreating the scene that he was talking about in his head as we spoke in a bright and bustling café in Mexico City. “There are stories inside the houses because of the lives that are lived there . . . there is something really beautiful about that.”
This realization, while working in a bookshop in London, was the spark of inspiration that led Speight to spend six months recreating the South London street, Lower Marsh, across the front of a selection of books.
Speight has spent the last two years on and off in Mexico City, arriving in the city due to travel and a number of serendipitous circumstances.
Speight’s mural in Oaxaca’s Santa Rosa neighborhood.
Mexico’s capital has proven to be a huge inspiration for the artist, who said that he finds Mexico City expansive for him, not only mentally but physically.
“Mexico affords the benefit of space,” he explained, “There’s an awful lot of walls and people’s attitudes [to art and creating space for art] are more generous and giving than in [the UK].”
Speight’s work also extends to street art. Street art that has a sense of place, that almost blends into the environment, making the observer look twice.
“It has to be site-specific,” he explained. “A mural is not just a piece of artwork, but I try to make it a backdrop in itself.”
This street art, of course, also involves books.
Talking about a piece that Speight was asked to create in Oaxaca, he describes how he created the backdrop by “tearing up [book] pages and sticking them, using crudo — what they use to make piñatas — to stick them on the wall.”
The entire National Palace, a commission completed earlier this year.
Working on the mural in Oaxaca, where he drew a scene from a dilapidated building in Detroit on to a booked-lined wall where “the books’ pages created a substitute for paint,” afforded him a chance to interact with the locals, who would come and talk to him about this work.
“What a lovely way to travel,” he exclaimed as he remembered the experience with a smile.
Speight’s love of books and buildings is palpable as he talks. He is energetic, enthusiastic and buzzing with ideas that flow quickly from one place to the next. It is hard to be in his presence and not want to get pulled along for the ride.
Talking about arriving to Mexico City, his emotion is visceral.
“I stepped out [into the street] and was literally transported to this other world,” he said, describing his reaction to Mexico’s historic downtown. “I was blown away to tears.”
He knew at that moment that there was work that he needed to create in Mexico City. His love of the historic center also plays out in the second-hand bookstores found there. Calle de Donceles is lined with bookshops, piled high with titles, pulling customers in with the enticing smell of old books. He quickly made friends with one of the booksellers who helps him find the perfect books for his work.
The ideal commission came a while later when he was asked to recreate the National Palace in Mexico City’s zócalo, now the residence of Mexico’s new president.
The challenge he places on himself is that he doesn’t take artistic license when it comes to the form of a building. He will be creative with colors but a love of architecture and something within him requires him to recreate the structures just as they are. No mean feat with a building that is some 200 meters long, screenprinted across nearly 50 books.
“Before I started making it, I just went to look at [the palace],” said Speight describing how he started to count the windows and the spaces, creating mental notes. Finding a model of this iconic building in a nearby subway station, he compared notes but found the model to be far from accurate.
Technology helps Speight with the accuracy: he calls upon Google Street View for his pieces.
“Stitch [the images] together and you literally have your reference,” he says, delighting in the fact that he can produce these building commissions from anywhere in the world. “All I need is a postcode.”
The final form that sits as an incredibly eye-catching piece of art in the apartment of the lucky owner is interactive. The beauty of the screen print is that if you want you can still remove a book and read it.
Ever creating, Speight is currently finding ways to mold books in resin.
“I want to create a whole wall [of books] as a bookshelf . . . like a city,” he said.
Eventually he wants to screenprint a whole village that people can walk around in, like a little miniature screenprinted book community.
For now, Speight is enjoying the expansiveness that Mexico has offered him with his work and it is likely that we will see more of Mexico’s iconic buildings, journeying across a selection of beautiful old books about Mexico’s history, in the near future.
• To check out more of Speight’s work you can follow him on Instagram. To commission a piece head to his website or contact him via his agent.
Susannah Rigg is a freelance writer and Mexico specialist based in Mexico City. Her work has been published by BBC Travel, Condé Nast Traveler, CNN Travel and The Independent UK among others. Find out more about Susannah on her website.
The Christmas season has officially started in Tehuacán, Puebla, with the lighting of an 18-meter Christmas tree decorated in a style described by the authorities as “folkloric.”
The tree, said to the biggest in the region, was decorated with 800 woven reed baskets made in two styles over the last month and a half by a team of 25 local artisans.
Accompanying the tree is an “Illuminated Valley,” a half-a-million-peso (US $24,500) exhibit composed of other handicrafts made by artisans from the region, including several fiberglass stars that were decorated by 300 Tehuacán children.
The tree and its singular decorations and the Illuminated Valley will remain across from municipal headquarters throughout the season.
