The new routes will be serviced by the Mexican airline Volaris, and will increase connectivity between the Bajío region and the rest of Mexico. (Wikimedia Commons)
Guanajuato International Airport (BJX) has announced 12 new domestic flights across Mexico, further connecting the Bajío region with the rest of Mexico.
Volaris airlines, Mexico’s biggest domestic air carrier, will now operate routes between Guanajuato and the following destinations:
Ciudad Obregón and Hermosillo in the state of Sonora
Oaxaca city
La Paz in Baja California Sur
Veracruz city
Mazatlán, Los Mochis and Culiacán, all in Sinaloa
Acapulco and Zihuatanejo, in Guerrero
Torreón in Coahuila
Tuxtla Gutiérrez in Chiapas
The airline already offers nine other destinations from the airport, and is now the airline with the most routes to the Bajío region, which spreads over the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro.
The Bajío region is undergoing a significant boom, which has increased demand for travel to the states of Guanajuato and Querétaro. (Volaris/Instagram)
The new destinations are part of a significant increase in domestic routes from Volaris, which has added some 90 new flights in 2023.
León’s Director of Tourism and Hospitality Yazmín Quiroz said that she believed the new flights would not only benefit tourists and business travelers but also local residents, who would be able to “visit loved ones and explore new destinations.”
State Tourism Minister Juan José Álvarez noted that “the new routes, alongside the existing ones, now connect us in an important way with the rest of the country.”
His state had gone from having nine connections to Mexican cities to 21, he said, and for good reason.
“These 12 new routes have been added because Guanajuato is the center of the country, and because the international airport is the most important in the region,” Álvarez said.
Local authorities and Volaris closely collaborated on the new flights, according to government officials, who stressed that the routes will help ensure Guanajuato’s continued growth and ensure that the state remains one of Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations.
The new flights will take Guanajuato International Airport to a total of 237 flights per week.
On July 6, Mexico's Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro met with trade representives Katherine Tai (U.S.) and Mary Ng (Canada) for the third meeting of the USMCA trade commission. (Twitter)
Energy, genetically modified (GM) corn, the protection of the vaquita marina porpoise and mining were among the issues discussed during bilateral talks Mexico’s Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro held separately on Thursday with United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Canadian Minister of International Trade, Export Promotion, Small Business and Economic Development Mary Ng.
The three officials are in Cancún, Quintana Roo, for the third meeting of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) Free Trade Commission.
A discussion point at the meeting was Mexico’s state-first energy policy, which has prompted both Canada and the U.S. to request dispute resolution consultations under USMCA rules. The issue still isn’t resolved. (Government of Mexico)
In her meeting with Buenrostro, Ambassador Tai “stressed the importance of Mexico fully meeting its USMCA commitments, including those related to certain of Mexico’s energy measures [sic], enforcement of its fisheries-related environmental laws, and biotechnology measures,” according to a statement issued by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR).
In 2022, both the United States and Canada requested dispute resolution consultations with Mexico under USMCA over energy policies that favor Mexican state-owned companies over private foreign ones. The issue still hasn’t been resolved almost a year later.
Tai said before Thursday’s meeting that some progress had been made, but “deep-seated” concerns remained.
“If we are not able to make more progress, the next step in the formal toolkit would be the request for a dispute settlement panel,” she said.
U.S. Trade Representative Tai has said that Mexico’s nationalistic energy policies disincentivize investment from U.S. clean-energy suppliers and companies seeking to buy clean energy. (usembassy.gov)
That option has been available to the United States since late last year, but it has chosen not to use it. There was no indication in the USTR statement, nor in a press release issued by Mexico’s Economy Ministry (SE), that the request for a panel was imminent.
The Canadian Ministry of International Trade said that Ng in her meeting with Buenrostro “expressed gratitude for the progress between Canada and Mexico on Mexico’s energy reforms, addressing concerns of Canadian companies, and looks forward to a full resolution.”
The biotechnology measures mentioned in the USTR statement refer to Mexico’s plan to ban imports of GM corn for human consumption by 2024, as well as GM corn used as animal feed at an unspecified later date. The United States, a large exporter of yellow corn fodder to Mexico, requested dispute settlement consultations on that issue early last month, and Canada subsequently said it would participate in the talks as a third party.
President López Obrador is steadfastly committed to Mexico’s plan to ban GM corn and acknowledged last month that the United States “might take us to a panel.”
Mexico says it is phasing out GM corn imports by 2024 to protect Mexicans’ health and Mexico’s native corn from contamination. The U.S. says Mexico’s concerns are not based on good science. (Government of Mexico)
The president, who asserts that GM corn is harmful to human health and poses a threat to native Mexican maize, said earlier this year that “no agreement in the world allows goods that are harmful to health to be bought or sold.”
The USMCA has “clauses that protect consumers, just as the environment and workers are protected,” he added.
The United States can request the establishment of a panel if a resolution isn’t reached 75 days after the commencement of the consultations. Tai reiterated the U.S. position on the GM corn issue before Thursday’s meeting with Buenrostro.
“We stand behind the safety of our agricultural products that have been enjoying a very robust trade between our three countries for several decades now and will continue to pursue our rights and interests,” she said.
Canada is not a major corn exporter, but it does send large amounts of GM canola to Mexico, hence Canada’s interest in the outcome of the Mexico-U.S. (Canola Council of Canada)
The SE said in its statement that “relevant advances in the preservation of the vaquita marina and the biodiversity in the upper Gulf of California” were discussed during Buenrostro’s meeting with Tai.
Mexico’s Environment Ministry announced last month that it will expand the “zero tolerance” protection zone for the critically endangered porpoise, whose numbers have been decimated by gillnet fishing for totoaba, a species of fish whose swim bladder is considered a delicacy in China and some other parts of Asia. The vaquita has suffered from being frequent bycatch in totoaba gillnets.
The USTR statement said that Tai also “raised concerns about regulatory uncertainty facing U.S. electronic payment services providers in Mexico” and spoke to Buenrostro about “the importance of addressing the recent surge of imports of steel and aluminum products.”
The two officials “agreed to have their teams intensify their engagement” on the latter issue, the statement said.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai (L) and Canadian Trade Minister Mary Ng (R) have spent much of the López Obrador administration reacting to Mexico’s desire to enact reforms in several of its industries, including energy, mining and agriculture. (Twitter)
With regard to the USMCA’s “rapid response” labor mechanism — which the United States has used to ask for labor reviews at Mexican workplaces including a mine and a tire factory — Buenrostro “emphasized the importance of a reasonable and good faith use” of the measure, saying that it should be a “last resort” and not seek to replace “national institutions,” according to the SE statement.
The Economy Ministry said that Mexico’s new mining law — which reduces the initial length of mining concessions from 50 years to 30 years, among other measures — was one of the issues discussed in Buenrostro’s meeting with Ng.
The Canadian official “highlighted the important contributions of Canadian mining companies to the development of the Mexican economy” and “discussed the importance of implementing mining reforms that uphold rules-based trade,” including under the USMCA and World Trade Organization agreements.
If the Canadian government believes Canadian mine owners are being treated unfairly in Mexico, it could potentially challenge the new mining law under USMCA mechanisms.
In 2021, over half of foreign-owned mines in Mexico were the property of Canadian companies. (Canal del Congreso)
The SE said that Buenrostro and Ng also spoke about a ruling in Mexico in Canada’s favor in January regarding a dispute with the United States over content rules for vehicles, as well as “other issues of shared interest.”
Trilateral talks were scheduled for Friday, the summit’s final day.
The USTR said in a statement last week that officials would “discuss how the parties can further facilitate economic growth and investment to increase competitiveness in North America.”
Tai’s office said that exports of U.S. goods and services to Mexico and Canada were valued at almost US $790 billion last year, a 31% increase from 2012 and a 366% increase from 1993.”
Mexico was the United States’ second largest trade partner last year after Canada, with two-way trade worth $779.3 billion. Mexican exports accounted for $324.4 billion, while U.S. exports were worth $454.9 billion.
Automobile manufacturing is a central part of the Mexican economy. BMW's sales have increased nearly 110% in 2023. (BMW)
Mexico’s light vehicle production was up 13.9% in the first half of this year compared to the same period of 2022, as the country’s automotive industry continues to recover from the pandemic.
According toa report by the nation’s statistics agency INEGI, 1.9 million light vehicles were produced in Mexico between January and June. Of these, 76.5% were light trucks. The rest were cars.
Car sales finally appear to have rebounded after the supply chain and shutdown issues related to COVID-19. (BMW)
The strongest growth was registered by Audi, Honda and BMW Group, with production increases of 152.4%, 124.7% and 109.8%, respectively. The only companies that saw a decline in production were Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, KIA and Stellantis.
During June, 331,707 light vehicles were produced in Mexico, a 16.3% annual increase. Exports were up 20.46%, to 286,291 vehicles, while internal sales were up 25.66%, to 113,553 vehicles.
The figures are the latest sign that Mexico’s automotive industry is recovering well from the global supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In May,102,697 new light vehicles were sold in Mexico, making it the first May to surpass prepandemic sales from 2019.
The automotive industry is vital to Mexico’s economy, contributing almost 4% of GDP and 20.5% of manufacturing GDP, according to the Mexican Association of the Automotive Industry.
Cars being manufactured at the Audi plant in San José Chiapa, Puebla. (Carlos Aranda/Unsplash)
The sector shrank by more than 20% in 2020, when the pandemic forced production plants to close. Car manufacturing fell by a further 2% in 2021 due to a shortage of semiconductor chips.
However, the sector rebounded in 2022 — with 9.24% annual growth in production, 5.86% in exports and 7.03% in sales — and continues to flourish in 2023. The industry has also benefited from the nearshoring of operations from Asia, including those related to car assembly and to the manufacturing of key inputs such as semiconductors.
In the first nine months of 2022, Mexico became theleading exporter of cars to the U.S., taking the top spot for the first time ever.
Don Serapio Ruiz and his wife Lupita opened El Tejón vineyards 25 years ago, when they were told it was impossible to grow wine grapes in the Lake Chapala area. (John Pint)
While more and more foreigners are flocking to Lake Chapala’s north shore, the south side of the lake has caught the fancy of grape growers. Seven vineyards have appeared on the lake’s southern shore over the last few years, and two of them, Viñedos El Tejón and Finca La Estremancia, now accept visitors.
This entire viticulture frenzy, it seems, started thanks to the expertise and enthusiasm of just one man: Serapio Ruiz Rivera. Don Serapio started trying to grow grapes here 25 years ago when many claimed it was impossible.
Viñedos El Tejón grows a wide variety of grapes on 26 hectares of land near San Luís Soyatlán, Jalisco. (John Pint)
I recently found myself on the south shore, headed for what may be the most curious place on the whole lake: Igloo Kokolo, an environmental education center that looks more like a Smurf village than anything else.
While passing through the little town of San Luís Soyatlán, located 11 kilometers directly south of Ajijic, my friends and I decided to try making a Mexican-style surprise visit to Don Serapio and his wife Lupita at the El Tejón vineyard.
Just finding El Tejón turned out to be an adventure. We expected Google Maps to take us right there; what we didn’t expect was to suddenly find ourselves on a lonely, ever-worsening dirt road, apparently in the middle of nowhere.
“Are you sure this is the way?”
Don Serapio’s vines are protected by mesh. “Possums, foxes, squirrels, birds and leaf-cutting ants all enjoy grapes just as much as we do,” he says. (John Pint)
“Google Maps says so, and Google Maps is…”
“…Is sometimes drastically wrong. Do you remember the time when…?”
In this case, Google Maps’ reputation was vindicated. Suddenly, we were in front of a gate with a sign reading Viñedos el Tejón. And behind the gate, very healthy-looking grapevines stretched off as far as the eye could see.
Don Serapio was somewhere among those grapevines, working in the heat of the day, but we were welcomed into the cool patio of his home by his wife María Guadalupe Amescuader de Ruíz, known to all as Lupita. She immediately poured us a cup of their white wine.
“This is a malvasia with chardonnay,” said Lupita, “fermented with its own natural yeast. All of our wines are as close to natural as you can get. So the bottom of this bottle is cloudy because we haven’t filtered it. Instead, we clarify it with ice in the form of frozen jugs of water which we put into the vat.”
Lupita told us that her husband fell in love with grapes during the 45 years he spent working in California’s Napa Valley.
Not just wine… Don Serapio offers a pajarete (an alcoholic drink made with raw milk) to a visitor. (EVTMX)
“Many people in the wine industry know my husband’s name,” she told us. “In California, Spain, France and Chile, they all know Don Serapio and his talent for grafting grapevines.From Napa Valley, we brought small vines here to see how they might do at the lakeside.”
“We brought more than 20 varieties of grapes,” Lupita said, “and now we’re growing syrah, tempranillo, cabernet, chardonnay, malvasia, sauvignon blanc, grenache, Douro, pinot noir, nebbiolo and others. Actually, we only found two or three varieties that didn’t do well because they need a colder climate.”
At this point, we were joined by Don Serapio. I took advantage to ask him how he got involved with growing grapes for wine-making.
“When I first went to California,” he told me, “I started out working with strawberries, but along came immigration, and they sent me home to Mexico. Afterward, I found my way back, and the people I was with invited me to Napa to pick pears.”
After working in Napa, Don Serapio returned to Mexico in 1978, where he married Lupita. Thinking about where they could raise their children in the U.S., they were attracted by the peace and safety Napa offered in comparison to other California cities.
Don Serapio began working in grapevine grafting in Napa, where he and his family lived for 46 years.
With its mild lakeside climate, Viñedos El Tejón enjoys two harvests per year, in January and in July. (El Tejón)
Don Serapio also told us the story of how he became the owner of Rancho El Tejón (Badger Ranch), a name that he says goes back at least 100 years:
“It was 6 a.m. A woman was sweeping the street. ‘Hey Serapio,” she says, ‘I’m glad I ran into you. Would you mind coming to graft some trees for me?’
“I said, ‘Okay, let me tie up my mule.’ So I went into her house and said, ‘OK, we have to put the scions in water so the grafts will take. Tomorrow I’ll come to see how they look, and then you can tell me where to put the grafts.’”
The next day, as Don Serapio was grafting, the woman’s phone rang. One of her brothers was calling to ask if the deal to sell El Tejón would really be going through.
No, she told him. The buyer had changed his mind.
“I said, ‘You’re selling El Tejón?’” Don Serapio recalled. He asked to speak to her brother and paid the asking price without trying to talk the seller out of a single peso.
The very same day, he became the owner of the vineyard, which happened to lie right next to land he already owned, bringing his property up to a total of about 26 hectares.
“Plenty of space to experiment with new varieties,” he said.
Curiously, in Mexico the word tejón is applied to both the real North American badger, which is mainly nocturnal and quite aggressive, and the Mexican coati, a playful, diurnal creature, said to look like a cross between a raccoon, a monkey and an anteater.
“We’ve got both kinds here on our property,” says Don Serapio, who that says both populations are rather numerous, in fact. “Rancho El Tejón is really well-named.”
You can arrange a visit to El Tejón by calling Don Serapio at 333 492 4723 or Lupita at 331 262 7658. Both of them speak English. Ask Google Maps to take you to Viñedo El Tejón, Sinaloa, Fracc. Las Brisas, San Luis Soyatlan, Jalisco. To contact the above-mentioned Finca La Estremancia, call 331 546 4631.
Mexico Pacific will ship liquefied natural gas from a planned processing facility — the not-yet-built Saguaro Energía plant — to China, currently experiencing a high demand for LNG. (Ray Harrington/Unsplash)
Houston-based company Mexico Pacific Limited (MPL) will sell 1 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per year over a 20-year-period to Chinese company Zhejiang Energy, using a Mexican LNG production facility in Sonora under development by MPL.
MPL’s Saguaro Energía plant, to be located in Puerto Libertad, Sonora, will process natural gas bought from U.S. producers and exported to Mexico via existing cross-border pipelines before shipping it onward to Asia. MPL has said it will begin exporting gas in 2027.
A CGI rendering of the planned Saguaro Energia facility in Sonora. (Mexico Pacific Limited)
The Shell oil company is another prominent customer that plans to buy LNG processed at the Sonora plant. Shell and MPL signed their third 20-year LNG supply agreement in March.
Ivan Van der Walt, CEO of MPL,said that his company is “delighted” with the Zhejiang deal, adding that “LNG is an important pillar to China’s energy security needs and its underlying green policy ambitions.”
Xiqiang Chai, Deputy General Manager at Zhejiang Provincial Energy, agreed that the agreement is “an important step in further diversifying our energy supply portfolio and strengthening Zhejiang Energy’s natural gas industry.”
Zhejiang Provincial Energy Group is one of China’s government-backed city gas distributors, now competing on the global market. It owns a 51% stake in an LNG terminal in Wenzhou, on China’s eastern coast, and holds a 20-year supply agreement with Exxon Mobil.
AMLO has said that a new pipeline to be built by Mexico Pacific would funnel U.S LNG to Sonora for processing, but it is not yet clear if the pipeline is still in a planning phase or will even be built. Existing pipelines could do the job. (Depositphotos)
Chinese LNG importers have been racing to sign contracts with producers, including in Qatar and the U.S. in recent months, after LNG prices in Asia reached record highs.
MPL’s Saguaro Energía will have a production capacity of 14.1 million metric tons per year. It has access to the nearby Permian Basin, which straddles the U.S. states of Texas and New Mexico and contains more than 600 million cubic feet of natural gas resources.
The company boasts that the Saguaro plant offers “the lowest landed price of North American LNG into Asia,” and “a significantly shorter shipping route, avoiding Panama Canal transit risk for Asian markets.”
The construction of the plant was announced by President López Obrador last year, who said it represented a US $2.5 billion investment in Mexico. In May 2023, López Obrador said that MPL is now planningto invest US $14 billion in a natural gas pipeline and liquefaction plant in Sonora, although the details of this plan remain unclear and unconfirmed by MPL.
Inflation rates are once again down, to 5.06%, say national statistics agency INEGI - slightly above consensus forecasts by Citibanamex. (pxfuel)
Mexico’s annual headline inflation rate slowed to 5.06% in June, its lowest level since March 2021, according to data from the national statistics agency INEGI.
The rate declined for a fifth consecutive month in June, and has now fallen 2.85 percentage points from the 7.91% reading in January. The annual rate in May was 5.84%.
Headline inflation rate continues to drop for the fifth consecutive month, reaching the lowest rates since 2019. (thelastcarmusai/Wikimedia)
The 5.06% rate for June is slightly above a 5.04% consensus forecast of analysts surveyed by Citibanamex.
Despite the recent string of declines, headline inflation remains above the central bank’s target of 3%, with tolerance for one percentage point in either direction.
On a month-over-month basis, the National Consumer Price Index, which measures headline inflation, increased 0.10%, INEGI said.
The annual core inflation rate, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, was 6.89% in June, down from 8.45% in January and 7.39% in May. It was the first time since March 2022 that core inflation was below 7%. On a month-over-month basis, the rate increased 0.30%.
Pantheon Macroeconomics Latin America chief Andres Abadia attributes the strong performance of the Mexican economy to low raw materials costs, the peso’s strong performance and the “delayed effect of tighter fiscal conditions.” (Globelynx)
Andrés Abadia, chief of Latin America at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that “the delayed effect of tighter financial conditions, lower prices for raw materials and the impressive performance of the Mexican peso in recent months” all contributed to lower annual inflation in June.
The strength of the peso has boosted consumption of imported goods, the bank Banco Base said in a recent report, but inflation is still placing pressure on the budgets of millions of Mexicans.
INEGI data showed that prices for processed food, beverages and tobacco were 10.49% higher in June than a year earlier, while non-food goods were 5.7% more expensive and services were 5.25% dearer.
Meat prices increased by 2.05% on an annual basis — down from 5.9% in May — while fruit and vegetables were 3.98% more expensive, a slight increase compared to the previous month.
Energy prices, including those for gasoline and electricity, helped drive inflation down in June, falling 3.08% on an annual basis.
The strong peso has boosted Mexico’s consumption of imports, but it has done little to solve cost-of-living concerns for many Mexicans. (Pat Whelen/Unsplash)
Gabriela Siller, director of economic analysis at Banco Base, noted on Twitter that the annual inflation rate for processed food has been above 10% for 11 months. The 10.49% rate recorded in June is “one of the reasons why inflation in Mexico still feels very high,” she wrote.
The Bank of Mexico is currently forecasting that annual headline inflation will fall to 4.6% in the final quarter of 2023, and continue declining throughout next year to reach 3.1% in Q4 of 2024.
Refugio De Potosí is an incredible gem, located less than an hour from the beach towns of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. (All photos by Elisabeth Ashe)
Whenever I get the chance to travel, I enjoy searching out museums, sanctuaries or parks and special hidden gems. Until recently, however, I’d neglected to visit the extraordinary Refugio de Potosí, an ecological sanctuary less than an hour from the beach towns of Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, where I live.
Established in 2008 by Pablo Mendizabal and Laurel Patrick to promote the conservation of and education about local native species, El Refugio de Potosí is a nonprofit 7-hectare ecological park located in a tropical dry forest in the town of Barra de Potosí, on the Guerrero coast.
The sanctuary’s mission is to educate the public about native and endangered species in Guerrero.
When I met up with Patrick, she was with several of her volunteers near one of the educational pavilions, where she was discussing the scientific experiments they’d be presenting to a school group later that week. Her volunteers are university students studying biology, ecology and environmental education and working toward their practicums at the reserve.
Charming garden paths meander in and out of an array of botanical displays here, which include an iguana habitat, macaw roosts, a wildlife pond and an 18-meter high observation tower from which you can watch native birds over the vast landscape.
Patrick and I began our tour with the newly built ConCeniencia education center, which houses the skull of an American crocodile and the encasement of eggs from local birds. Next to the display is a wall chart to help you match which egg belonged to which species.
Outside, we took a path past the wildlife pond to the hummingbird station to sit and watch as a constant stream of the birds nourished themselves at the numerous feeding stations. There’s even a hummingbird chair.
The hummingbird chair offers a moment of zen for visitors amidst the heat of the Guerrero coast.
It was a moment of zen; if not for the blisteringly hot day, I could have sat there forever.
As we trailed down a pathway to education stations that served as teaching opportunities for guides giving tours, I asked Patrick whether local guides gave tours at El Refugio.
“Only some people are allowed to bring their tours here,” she replied. “We are looking for tour companies that understand the park and are willing to educate visitors on what we are achieving here. We are not interested in tour guides who spend most of their time on their phones or tourists only here to picnic.”
“People think we are a zoo,” she added. “We are not … although we do have some animals and birds that we have rescued.”
The reserve also boasts an extensive collection of bird eggs.
As we walked, I felt that Patrick was indeed the kind of guide she hoped to attract: she knew an amazing amount about every single insect, bird and creature in the area.
Although the goal of El Refugio de Potosí is always to return animals they rehabilitate to the wild, some inhabitants stay in the sanctuary forever because they can’t or don’t know how to feed themselves or survive independently. Two of these permanent residents included a Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine and a deer.
A little farther along, we entered the Guacamaya Aviary, where El Refugio keeps the military macaws. It’s large enough for the birds to fly freely. Patrick told me that she hopes to train the birds to leave their enclosure during the day and return each evening for safety’s sake.
And finally she took me to the exhibit I was anxious to see, touted as one of the world’s largest assembled sperm whale skeleton. The story of how it came to be at the refuge is detailed in a thrilling narrative on their website.
The sanctuary also boasts one of the largest assembled sperm whale skeletons in the world.
Even after the whale skeleton, there was still an endless array of flora and fauna to see — horned owls, iguanas and much more. Numerous signs along the paths explained everything I was seeing.
Given the heat of the day, I opted out of the 18-meter climb to the tower. I promised myself that next time I’m at El Refugio — and there definitely will be a next time — I’d be better prepared with a hat, sunscreen and an earlier start to the day.
To find out more and to book a tour, contact El Refugio de Potosí by phone at 755-557-2840 or via email at [email protected]. They are located in the Playa Blanca neighborhood of Zihuatanejo on Lot 7.
The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.
The zoo, located in the sprawling Chapultepec Park in central Mexico City, has everything from axolotls, to snakes and even giant pandas! (Chapultepec Zoo)
Mexico’s oldest zoo, the Chapultepec Zoo in Mexico City, has turned 100 years old.
Founded by Alfonso Luis Herrera, the “father of biology in Mexico,” the Chapultepec Zoo began construction on July 6, 1923, and opened in October 1924. The zoo is named in Herrera’s honor: its full name in Spanish is Zoológico de Chapultepec Alfonso Herrera.
Boasting a collection of 1,236 animals, the Chapultepec Zoo is the nation’s most visited. (Chapultepec Zoo)
To mark its 100-year anniversary, the zoo held a parade Thursday morning with live music and performers wearing costumes of the zoo’s animals.
In its beginnings, the Chapultepec Zoo was like any other: a place to display captive animals for people to view. It was the only zoo in Mexico City where people could find animals from all over the world, said head of the city’s Zoos and Wildlife Conservation Directorate Fernando Gual Sill in an interview with the newspaper El Universal.
Today, the Chapultepec Zoo is a conservation center, a scientific research center and a recreational space that educates the public about animal protection.
There are a range of biomes, many of which reflect the diverse nature of Mexico. (Chapultepec Zoo)
“Nowadays, zoos around the world, including those in Mexico City, are consolidating themselves into centers for wildlife conservation,” Gual said.
The zoo displays and cares for different species, including lions, jaguars, giraffes, kangaroos and zebras. It also cares for endangered species like the giant panda and for endemic animals like the Xochimilco axolotl or the volcano rabbit.
It also develops breeding, conservation and research programs on priority species such as the Mexican wolf and the California condor.
Part of these conservation efforts include one of Latin America’s first “frozen zoos,” a bank of genetic material with 1,400 samples of some 29 species of animals that are stored in frozen liquid nitrogen tanks. In the coming decades, these samples will be used in reproduction programs.
Chapultepec Zoo was the first place in the country where Mexicans could see animals from across the world. (Chapultepec Zoo)
Among the DNA samples kept in the frozen zoo are those from giant pandas, Mexican wolves, jaguars and bighorn sheep.
Gual told the magazine Wired that modern-day zoos have helped rescue some species from extinction, including the Mexican wolf. In 2014, the Chapultepec Zoo reported the first Mexican wolf pups born following artificial insemination. The procedure was done using genetic material from the bank.
The discount will likely be a welcome financial respite for residents of northern states this year, where 40 C–45 C weather during a heatwave had air-conditioners running nonstop. (Carlos Lindner/Unsplash)
If you’re worried that higher-than-normal use of your airconditioner during the recent heat wave will result in a higher electricity bill, don’t be — every summer, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) subsidizes electricity in 20 states where the average temperatures surpass 30 degrees Celsius (86 F).
Known as the “summer rate,” the CFE allows residents of the hottest states in the country to access a lower electricity rate during the summer months.
Mexico’s recent heatwave had the country trying its hardest to cool down. Even in traditionally cooler states, such as Mexico City, the heat was punishing. But the federal entity doesn’t qualify for the discount. (Graciela López/Cuartoscuro)
The CFE defines the summer period as May to October and the rate can apply for the entirety of the summer, depending on weather conditions — consult directly with CFE to find out which months are covered by the subsidy where you live.
This rate is only applicable to households.
To apply for the subsidy, the electricity connection must be individual in each home.The CFE applies the discount directly, so there’s no need to request it.
Residents of Nuevo León, Sonora, Coahuila, Baja California, Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Colima, San Luis Potosí, Oaxaca, Morelos, Guerrero, Veracruz, Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche y Yucatán are all eligible for the special rate.
The CFE’s summer rate will come as a relief to many after this year’s electricity price increase of 7.1%. Since January, users with a domestic rate pay 0.945 pesos (US $0.05) for the first 75 kilowatt hours (KWh) of consumption, up from 0.882 pesos last year.
The increase in price came after the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) lifted subsidized prices established in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The domestic rate will increase to $1.011 pesos at the end of 2023, according to the CFE.
Workers enrolled with IMSS saw a 5.8% real-terms payrise in June, one of the largest on record. (Twitter)
The Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) reported the highest salary increase in 21 years in June, although job creation during the month was sluggish.
Employees registered with IMSS earned an average salary of 534.1 pesos (US $30.89) per day in June, equivalent to a monthly salary of 16,245 pesos (US $939.26). This represented an 11.2% increase from last year, or 5.8% in real terms.
Pay has once again increased, says IMSS, and is now at an average of 534.1 pesos per day, or US $30.89. (IMSS)
“Considering an annual inflation of 5.18% in the period (according to data from the first half of June), the real increase in the average base salary was 5.78%, the highest real-term growth since February 2002,” reported an analysis by the Mexican financial firm Banco Base.
Wage increases have been a trend throughout President López Obrador’s administration, in which nominal annual increases of 6% or more have been seen every month since January 2019.
Carlos Ramírez, a consultant for Integralia, explained to El Financiero newspaper that this wage growth is due to a combination of rising minimum wages, high inflation and a tight labor market.
“Companies are having to pay more to retain or attract people,” he said.
Wage growth has been a consistent theme of President López Obrador’s government. He has said he would like to see the minimum wage reach 260 pesos by the end of his term in 2024. (Gob. de México)
President López Obrador has made raising the minimum wage a priority of his administration. It was just 88 pesos per day when he took office in 2018 and is nowup to 207.44 pesos (US $11.99) in most of the country.
AMLO has said he wants it to reach 260 pesos (US $15.03) by the time he leaves office in 2024, despite some economists’ fears that the increases may be fueling inflation.
Although the wage increases reported by the IMSS are encouraging, job creation last month was below average. The IMSS reported that 24,398 new positions were created in June, well below the 42,618 created the previous month, and below the 10-year June average of 29,000. Over the first six months of the year, however, 514,411 jobs were created – the second highest figure on record.
“Traditionally the month of June has weak job creation,” Ramírez told El Financiero. “I do not see anything to worry about; traditionally there is some volatility.”
Mónica Flores, president of ManpowerGroup LATAM, agreed that job creation tends to be slow in the second quarter of the year. Manpower forecasts that Mexico will create between 250,000 and 300,000 jobs between July and September.
Economic sectors with the largest job growth are currently the construction, transport and communications, and commerce sectors. ManpowerGroup LATAM also predicts strong growth over the next quarter in health and life sciences, transport, logistics and automotive and the manufacturing sector.
