A protest held earlier this year against parking meters in San Miguel.
Some residents of San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, traveled to the state capital to protest what they called the “privatization” of their city’s streets.
A dozen members of Yo Soy San Miguel de Allende (I am San Miguel de Allende) protested outside the state Congress in the city of Guanajuato after lawmakers approved a parking meter project for the colonial city.
The organization’s spokesman said the municipal administration had signed a contract with a firm that will operate the parking meters, but citizens were not consulted about the project.
There were several processes through which public opinion was gauged, but José Luis Vargas said people were “lied to through a false consultation on transportation issues.”
The proponents of the parking meters also collected signatures and conducted a consultation during a bullfight, “but they did not adhere to citizen participation laws,” he accused.
The parking meters project has been approved under the “pretext” of obtaining resources to improve the urban mobility of disabled citizens, but Vargas questioned why only 20% of the revenue obtained through the meters will go to city coffers. The remaining 80% — of an estimated 360 million pesos (US $17.8 million) per year — will go to the firm operating the devices.
The protest concluded with a warning that injunctions would be filed against the municipal administration.
López Obrador announced a new health strategy this morning.
President López Obrador has announced a new integrated federal health system that will incorporate all of Mexico’s states within two years.
The president told reporters at his daily press conference today that eight states will be added to the new federally-operated system every six months.
The first to be included will be Guerrero, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche.
The president said the public health system as it is currently organized, with federal and state authorities offering separate services, is not working and that his plan will fix it.
“The agreement means that the states will transfer [management] of their health care services to the federal government, which will be in charge of the whole health system,” López Obrador said.
Health funding currently allocated to state governments will instead be used by the federal government, he added, explaining that a constitutional reform would allow that to occur.
The leftist president, who has promised to create a universal and free health care system such as those in Canada and Europe, said the federal government has a budget of 90 billion pesos (US $4.5 billion) to create the system and that 25 billion additional pesos will be allocated to implementing it in the first eight states.
López Obrador also said that the Seguro Popular health care program – which offers free health care services to people with no other insurance – will be replaced by a new scheme.
“It’s obvious that it hasn’t worked, it’s not insurance and it’s not popular. It’s going to be replaced by a public health system that guarantees quality medical care and free medication,” he said.
The president will officially present his federal health plan at an event in Mérida, Yucatán, later today.
Oaxaca city has topped a list of the world’s best cultural destinations for 2019.
Culture Trip, a global start-up operating in travel, media and entertainment, has released its Culture Trip Wishlist, a ranking of 12 destinations travelers shouldn’t miss in 2019 based on search data and global contributor expertise.
“Taking our cultural crown for 2019 is Oaxaca city,” said Culture Trip, for its sensational cuisine, amazing archaeological sites and a rich tradition of handwoven crafts. Culture Trip recommends Oaxaca city’s contemporary art museum, MACO, which “showcases an intriguing curation of Mexican art housed in an impressive old colonial building.”
The capital of the diverse state is described as the birthplace of mezcal. “Unlike spring break favorites Acapulco and Cabo . . . Oaxaca offers a truly authentic experience, from the flavors to the festivals.”
Known as the “land of the seven moles” due to the rich and complex sauces for which its cuisine is famous, this city will fire up visitors’ taste buds as much as their other senses. Locally made ceramics, embroidery and hand-woven rugs are just a few of the handicrafts that can be found.
Historical treasures abound in the city as well, as pre-Columbian times saw Oaxaca ruled from atop Monte Albán and there are well-preserved archaeological elements, including pyramids and ball courts, that deserve a visit. With temperate weather all year round, continued the report, “there is no bad time in 2019 to visit this gem of a city.”
Owen Pritchard, editorial director at Culture Trip, said, “With so many places to explore around the world – and the abundant, if unorganized, streams of inspiration on social media – it’s sometimes hard to decide where to go next. We wanted to see what we could do to help anyone looking for memorable cultural experiences or choosing a destination in 2019.”
The destinations included in the Culture Trip Wishlist – Destinations 2019 were identified as having the biggest growth in interest from the start-up’s millennial audience.
López Obrador and Morena party Deputy Martí Batres listen as Supreme Court justice Aguilar gives his address.
The chief justice of the Supreme Court (SCJN) has called for harmony between the three branches of government amid a conflict over judicial salaries.
Presenting his fourth and final annual report yesterday, Luis María Aguilar Morales declared that “we want to work together for a better Mexico, resolving controversies according to the laws that the Congress draws up and according to the constitution in order to protect the rights of everyone.”
In an address before President López Obrador, lawmakers and other officials that was punctuated by a spell of dizziness that forced him to take a seat and pause for a few minutes, the 69-year-old Aguilar said the Supreme Court is guided by the legacy of former president Benito Juárez.
“Among the many areas of agreement, one of the most important we have with you [López Obrador] is . . . [Benito Juárez’s] maxim that governs the life of a constitutional democracy: nothing by force, all by reason and law,” he said.
Aguilar’s address came just three days after federal judges demonstrated publicly for the first time ever to accuse López Obrador of attempting to interfere in the judiciary and to reject his claim that they earn up to 600,000 pesos (US $29,500) a month.
As part of the new government’s austerity measures, lawmakers from the president’s leftist 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 – 60% less than the former president’s wage.
But the SCJN ruled last Friday that the Federal Public Servants Remuneration Law must be suspended, triggering criticism that judges are only concerned about protecting their own hip pockets.
But Aguilar said the court is committed to working for the benefit of all Mexicans.
“The federal judicial power is one of the three powers of the union and thus we recognize that we are part of the framework of the Mexican state and that we must be joined, in harmony and agreement, with the other powers, the executive and the legislative,” he said.
In spite of the underlying conflict between the executive and judiciary, Aguilar contended that the presence of López Obrador at the court’s presentation of its annual report and that of Supreme Court justices at the president’s December 1 inauguration were evidence of “democratic normality.”
He explained that under his four-year administration, 80% of cases heard by federal courts related to just three crimes: petroleum theft, drug trafficking and weapons possession.
Aguilar also said that federal courts had sanctioned 260 public officials – including 85 judges – declaring that “in the Federal Judiciary Council there is no place for tolerance of corruption or improper conduct.”
López Obrador, who on Tuesday said that “only Donald Trump earns more than the president of the Supreme Court,” extended his hand in assistance to Aguilar when he sat amid his episode of giddiness and applauded him when he recommenced his address.
At the end of the presentation, he shook hands with the chief justice and gave him a friendly slap on the back, belying the differences between the branch of government he heads and that led by Aguilar.
Earlier in the day, López Obrador left the National Palace on foot to walk to the Supreme Court only to be swamped by a horde of well-wishers.
The president’s small, unarmed security detail was overwhelmed, which allowed one woman to get close enough to plant two kisses on the president, the newspaper Milenio reported.
After Aguilar’s presentation, López Obrador walked back to the National Palace, with his small group of security “assistants” enlisting the support of street vendors in the area to help clear a path for the president amid another swarming mass.
“Don’t push him, you’ll give him a heart attack” and “I love you Grandpa” were among the comments called out by those present while some suggested that the president needed to rethink his approach to security.
The Nayarit coastline where Costa Canuva is being developed.
A US $150-million Ritz-Carlton Reserve luxury hotel has been announced in the Costa Canuva development in the Riviera Nayarit.
Portuguese construction firm Mota Engil and Thor Urbana, a Mexico City real estate developer, said the new hotel, with 110 rooms and 45 villas, will open in 2022.
Costa Canuva is a $1.8-billion project that is being developed by Mota Engil on 25 hectares of prime coastal real estate, and will have a golf course and over 7,000 hotel rooms at five exclusive luxury properties.
The Ritz-Carlton Reserve is the second hotel that has been confirmed for Costa Canuva, but Mota Engil continues to look for more investors.
The first stage of the project concluded with the construction of the first Fairmont property in the region.
Costa Canuva is located in Costa Capomo, Compostela, 10 kilometers from Rincón de Guayabitos and 35 kilometers from the Puerto Vallarta International Airport, making it the beach community closest to the city of Guadalajara.
Velasco, left, will have bodyguards but López Obrador, right, does without.
The former governor of Chiapas and his attorney general will have state-paid personal security for the next 15 years in accordance with a law approved during the previous government’s last year in office.
Manuel Velasco, who governed the southern state for the Ecological Green Party (PVEM) between 2012 and last Friday, and Raciel López Salazar, who served during the past two governments, will be the beneficiaries of the law that was promulgated in July 2017.
Decree 223 says they will be entitled to a personal security detail “for services rendered to the state” and stipulates that the state Secretariat of Finance must allocate funds for the purpose.
The president of the Supreme Court of Chiapas, who remains in active service, and the former state security secretary, who is now the attorney general, will also be afforded bodyguards after they leave public office for the same length of time they served in their final public role.
The newspaper El Universal sought comment from Velasco, who served as a federal lawmaker before becoming governor, about the law and the size of the security detail he will have but didn’t receive a response.
President López Obrador said at his daily press conference this morning that “if it’s true” that Velasco will have personal protection “it’s an excess that shouldn’t be allowed.”
He added: “My personal opinion is that there shouldn’t be privileges, that special treatment for officials should end.”
López Obrador, who took office on December 1, has disbanded the Estado Presidencial Mayor, which for more than 90 years was the institution charged with protecting the president of Mexico.
Governor Aureoles presents Zamora with the migrants' award.
Dreams came true on both sides of the Mexico-United States border for the Zamora Fernández family.
Originally from Gómez Farías in Zamora, Michoacán, the Zamoras left more than 50 years ago to find a better future for themselves and their children.
Working as farm laborers in California allowed the couple to put their three children — all born in the golden state — through school.
Half a century later the family has put down new roots in Mexico. The Zamoras’ youngest son, Adrián Zamora Fernández, returned to Mexico to play professional basketball after becoming a renowned player in both the countries he calls home.
At 19 he began playing for the Montana State University team, but in his senior year he was drafted by the Red Hawks of Veracruz.
At 23 he was called to play on Mexico’s national basketball team and he now plays for the Aguacateros, the team that represents his parents’ home state in the Mexican basketball league.
Yesterday Zamora, who has dual citizenship, was recognized by the state government with the 2018 Michoacán Migrant Award.
His story, it was related during the ceremony, is an example of what one can obtain through effort and determination. Governor Silvano Aureoles Conejo described Zamora as a role model for Mexican youth.
Zamora’s parents are now retired and occasionally visit the homeland for five or six months at a time, said the 32-year-old, but they always go back north “because the family is on the other side [so] they come and go.”
The Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, established by UNESCO in 1988, lies along the border of the Mexican states of Jalisco and Colima and includes cloud forests and deciduous, mesophytic and tropical forests within its boundaries.
It also includes hundreds of caves, almost all of them vertical pits.
Ninety-four of these caves are described in the book Las Cavernas de Cerro Grande by Carlos Lazcano, but only one of them was found to contain a notable number of formations such as stalactites and stalagmites. That cave, La Cueva de los Monos, is considered by some to be Jalisco’s most beautiful cave, but hard to reach.
This is the cave we had come to visit and below are a few notes on our expedition:
It’s 7:00am at Rancho El Zapote. The air is full of early-morning sounds. Loudest of all are the roosters that live only meters from my tent and have been trying to wake me up since 4:00am. Then come the chickens, a very large pig and dozens of loudly mooing cows, one of which wears a clanking bell, indicating that she is the leader of the herd. I guess it’s time to get out of my sleeping bag and into my caving pants.
On the trail to the cave.
Today we are going to visit La Cueva de los Monos (Cave of the Figurines), which can only be reached after a long, hard climb up a steep mountainside above the little town of Toxin, which is located 37 kilometers northwest of Colima city. The cave is so named, I understand, because local people claim they found artifacts inside.
Our group obviously considered a good breakfast the key to good caving, so it wasn’t until 10:20 that we finally headed up a north-trending trail which at first struck me as very friendly, after all the horror stories I had been told about the previous visit to this cave: “That climb was a killer,” said Mario Guerrero, leader of both our present trip and the preceding one, “because it was the hottest week of May, which is the hottest month of the year, and we hadn’t brought along nearly enough water.”
Now we were enjoying the relatively cool weather of November and we gained several hundred meters of altitude in a matter of minutes. The higher we rose, the more big, white, rocky outcrops we found along the way. “This is karst,” said a member of our expedition, Spanish geologist Isidoro Ortiz, pointing out the prickly surface, weathered by the rain, indicating that we were inside a calcite zone where beautiful caves were likely to be found.
“At this rate we’ll reach the cave in nothing flat,” I thought, but at that very moment our friendly trail came to an end at the edge of a cornfield. “¡Chin!” said Mario. “No sign of the trail anymore, but all we have to do is keep going north and we’re bound to find the cave.”
Well, the cornfield into which we plunged also happened to be home to billions of well-developed, ripe-for-traveling huizapoles (very prickly burrs) with which we were soon covered head to foot.
At last we got through the cursed cornfield and stopped under a huge ficus tree to pick the burrs off one another. After removing a million or so huizapoles from our clothing, we pushed our way into thick maleza (bush) higher than our heads. “¡Ay ay ay, uña de gato!” I heard someone yell up ahead. This is cat’s claw, just about the nastiest form of thorn you can find anywhere, as it is designed to grab you as you pass by and then tear your skin to shreds. We now had to proceed with great caution.
Lluvia Ramírez admires cave draperies.
It was about this point that our guide, Noé, son of our host at Rancho el Zapote, was forced to start swinging a machete in order to advance, further reducing our forward speed to that of a procession of turtles.
At last, dripping with sweat, well scratched by cat’s claw and covered with a new set of burrs, we arrived at the cave entrance. A crawl of four meters took us into a room so thickly decorated with stalactites, stalagmites and draperies that several hours of photography went by in what seemed like minutes. By the time the last of us crawled out into the sunlight, everyone else in the party was either sleeping or eating.
Well, the route that we had followed to get to the cave had been so unpleasant that we all breathed a sigh of relief when our guide Noé suggested we take a more direct and hopefully easier route back down the mountain.
And easier it was, at the beginning, with very little vegetation between well-separated outcrops of limestone. However, as the hillside grew steeper and the bush grew thicker, our old friends the burrs and cat’s claw reappeared and once again the machete was absolutely necessary for making the slightest progress.
Following this route, however, we had a whole new problem to deal with: the limestone had turned into heaps of sharply pointed rocky rubble which, like chunks of lava, were delicately piled one atop the other, offering the most treacherous footing imaginable.
We soon reached the point where we had only two hours left to get back to our truck before nightfall and at least a kilometer of nearly impenetrable bush to hack our way through. To make things worse, one member of our group, Ivan the biologist, was under attack from some sort of bug and suffering from all those unspeakable intestinal terrors usually reserved only for foreigners in Mexico.
At last we tore ourselves away from that enticing hole and once again resumed our grim assault on the unforgiving mountainside. Dripping with sweat, disentangling ourselves from thorn bushes and dreaded cat’s claw, scratching some new, mysterious red welts which had suddenly appeared on our skin, and teetering on unstable chunks of prickly rock, we inched our way downward.
Several times we were on the brink of mutiny: “It will take us a year to get down this way; we have to go back up to the cave and return the way we came,” cried some voices.
[soliloquy id="67361"]
Noé, however, kept chopping away calmly and, lo and behold, one hour before sunset, we spotted the infamous huizapol cornfield! But now, oh how friendly and inviting it looked!
To make a long story short, we were soon back on our beloved trail and reached our truck with several minutes of daylight to spare. Was it worth it? Yes, indeed! In all my 33 years of exploring Jalisco’s caves, I haven’t seen another with so many beautiful decorations. So, wearing proper burr-and-thorn-proof clothes, I’d be ready to go back anytime!
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.
Pipeline is described as one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in the world.
Energy infrastructure firm TransCanada Corp. officially opened a new 560-kilometer natural gas pipeline yesterday that runs between central Chihuahua and the Sinaloa coast.
The 20-billion-peso (US $1-billion) El Encino-Topolobampo pipeline crosses nine municipalities in Chihuahua and three in Sinaloa.
It will supply gas from Waha, Texas, to power plants and industrial and urban markets in the northeast of Mexico.
The 30-inch-diameter pipeline was first placed in service in July and has the capacity to provide 670 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.
More than 150,000 tonnes of steel were used for the project, on which 4,000 employees completed more than 22 million hours of work over a period of four and a half years.
Route of the El Encino-Topolobampo pipeline.
José Carlos Borunda, director of government affairs at TransCanada, said the project is one of the most innovative and ambitious infrastructure projects in the world.
The company faced demanding construction challenges due to the geography along the pipeline’s route, which includes the Tarahumara Sierra.
TransCanada also faced legal obstacles as indigenous groups challenged the project on environmental grounds.
At yesterday’s inauguration ceremony in the municipality of Bocoyna, Borunda said that the project would bring economic and social benefits to the municipalities it passes through.
TransCanada signed an agreement with the state government, pledging to invest 45 million pesos (US $2.2 million) to build 1,445 rainwater harvesting systems that will benefit residents in six Chihuahua municipalities.
Chihuahua Governor Javier Corral said that with the opening of the new project there are now 2,000 kilometers of gas pipelines that cross 29 municipalities in the state.
He acknowledged the importance of investment in the energy sector for the state’s economy and stressed that the government would continue to work to foster investor confidence in order to attract more infrastructure projects, including those in the renewable energy and tourism industries.
The hotel sector is expecting average occupancy of 70% during the Christmas vacation season, which would be the highest level in the past decade.
The forecast comes from the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels (AMHM) whose president, Rafael García, said that occupancy in the winter period last year was just 59%, with the September 2017 earthquakes and United States travel alerts both contributing to the low rate.
But this year is expected to be different.
Hotels in destinations such as Cancún, coastal Nayarit, Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo and Acapulco are predicting even higher occupancy rates — 85% and 90% in the holiday season, while for New Year’s they expect to be full.
“Occupation will increase from December 20 when school holidays start and continue until January 6, but the best [period] is the end of the year when a 100% occupancy rate is expected at the beach. Already, there are very few spaces left,” García said.
Hotel occupancy in Mexico’s three largest cities – Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey – over the same period is forecast to be slightly lower than the national average at 65%.
Santiago Mayoral, corporate finance vice-president at City Express Hotels, told the newspaper El Financiero that fewer business trips are made during the winter break.
Although foreign visitor arrivals remain strong, eight of every 10 visitors to Mexican destinations during the upcoming holidays will be domestic tourists, according to the AMHM.
A weak peso, currently hovering at just over 20 to the US dollar, is a significant factor for many Mexicans in deciding to vacation at home rather than abroad.
However, for foreigners, the weak peso is an added incentive to travel to Mexico and a growing number of flights into and out of the country are also helping to boost international tourism.
Tourism Secretary Miguel Torruco said last week that more than 42 million foreign tourists are expected to have visited Mexico in 2018 by the end of the year, a figure that would represent 8% growth on 2017 numbers.
Beyond the hotel sector, booking websites, airlines and the timeshare industry are also expecting a strong winter holiday period.
Ana Acevedo, Latin America vice-president for development at timeshare company RCI, said that vacation clubs in Mexico are expecting 80% occupancy over the break.
“Timeshares generate higher occupancy of between 10% and 15% above traditional hotels,” Acevedo said, explaining “the average stay is longer . . . timeshare owners stay on average seven nights.”
Cancún, the Riviera Maya, Los Cabos, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlán account for the greatest number of vacation properties but San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato and Valle de Guadalupe in Baja California are attracting a growing number of holiday house owners.
Booking website despegar.com and the low-cost airline Viva Aerobus both told El Financiero that they expected an upturn in business over the Christmas-New Year period.
The latter will open seven new seasonal routes including three that will connect Mexican cities to destinations in the United States.
