Operetta about a 19th-century Guadalajara friar a surprise hit with tapatios

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November 4, 2022

Vladimir Gomez conducts "Réquiem for Fray Antonio Alcalde" in Guadalajara — Thanks to the show's main musical writer and conductor Vladimir Gómez, his Zapopan Chamber Orchestra was one of two orchestras that performed in the show.

“I didn’t expect to learn the history of my city in a context like this, through song and dance and fantasy. I didn’t know Guadalajara had nearly ceased to exist because of a plague of locusts and then again barely survived an epidemic of smallpox that wiped out 50,000 people in New Spain. And I had no idea Fray Antonio was such a fierce defender of women’s rights. Operettas are usually kind of silly, but this was profound and educational and at the same time very simpático.”

This was the enthusiastically surprised opinion of a woman who attended the premiere of “Réquiem for Fray Antonio Alcalde,” a two-hour spectacle presented at the Guadalajara campus of the Tec de Monterrey university on October 28, in memory of the Dominican priest who served as Guadalajara’s bishop from 1771 to his death in 1792. During this period, Alcalde built the San Miguel Hospital and founded the Universidad de Guadalajara. At least, that’s what he’s known for, but his accomplishments hardly stop there.

To demonstrate that Alcalde did much more than that, the two-hour event, directed by Beto Ruiz, with music by Vladirmir Gómez, Pedro Martínez del Pasó and Carlos Lay, employed two orchestras, two dance troops, two mariachi musicians, a theater group, lots of Tec University students and a giant background screen, not to mention the contribution of Mexican opera baritone Jesús Suaste.

A total of over 80 people onstage contributed to a show that somehow managed to combine elements of opera, operetta and the modern musical.

Theater production of "Réquiem for Fray Antonio Alcalde" in Guadalajara — A few of the 80 performers who were onstage say goodbye to the enthusiastic audience.

“This project,” said Vladimir Gómez, director of the Zapopan Chamber Orchestra — as well as the Tec de Monterrey Orchestra — “was proposed by an organization called The Fray Antonio Alcalde Foundation, which contacted the Tec de Monterrey with the idea of producing a “requiem” about Alcalde. You see, the Tec already has a tradition of doing what they call requiems for famous people, to recall their lives.

“Usually these requiems are simply readings, but we decided to do this for Alcalde on a big scale, with acting and dancing and live music. So I wrote music especially for this purpose.”

Gómez, who wrote most of the music for this show, told me that this spectacle narrates how Alcalde ended up in Mexico, first in Yucatán and then in Guadalajara. It also includes a bit about his outlook on life and his philosophy.

“Into all this,” he says, “we mixed a bit of fiction, a story about a couple in love in Spain, but the boy has to go to Mexico to study and he ends up in Guadalajara because Alcalde founded a university here. This is a period piece, set in the 1700s, so we added a bit of conflict to make a good show.

“I don’t know if this is an operetta or a musical, but it’s definitely not an opera. It’s a Frankenstein! There’s even a Broadway-style song in it.”

I asked Gómez how he became interested in music. He told me that, as a child, he happened to live very close to Guadalajara’s most prestigious theatre, the Degollado.

“As a boy,” he confessed, “I thought about nothing but fútbol (soccer), but my home was just two blocks from the Degollado, so that was my favorite place to hang out. It was all fun. Instead of watching TV, I would watch the rehearsal of a ballet or an opera or a folk dance.”

On one special day, Gómez told me, he was in the Degollado and heard a Stabat Mater [a Christian hymn to the Virgin Mary] by Rossini.

Mural by Jorge Monroy in Guadalajara's Hospital Civil — This mural featuring the 18th-century Catholic bishop of Guadalajara, Antonio Alcalde, a local hero of the city, is by artist Jorge Monroy. You can see it in Guadalajara’s Hospital Civil.

“I fell in love with the tenor’s aria and the a cappella chorus,” he explained. “I was mesmerized, and I said, ‘This is what I want to do. I want to make music like this.’ So I started singing in the chorus, and I learned to read music.”

At the age of 16, curious circumstances brought Gómez and opera together.

“I was in the Degollado watching a rehearsal,” he said, “and suddenly, for some reason, the chorus had to leave. So, there was the orchestra with no chorus, and the director looked out at the seats and saw me sitting there, and he said, ‘How about you, joven (young man)? Can you sing this?’

“’Yes,’ I said.

“‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Come over here!’ So I came and I sang for the orchestra, and that’s how my career began.”

The requiem presented at the Tec de Monterrey is just one of several projects bringing back the memory of Fray Alcalde in Guadalajara. New interest in the friar’s achievements was probably sparked in 2017 with the completion of a huge mural painted by local artist Jorge Monroy inside the city’s new public hospital.

Both the mural and the requiem remind the public of the curious manner in which an unknown friar in a lonely monastery in Spain ended up becoming the Bishop of Guadalajara.

It seems that when Alcalde was in his 60s, he was the abbot of the Valverde monastery in Spain. One evening, a group of hunters knocked at the gate, among them the king.

“We were lost in the woods,” said the king, “and we want to spend the night here.” Since the king’s visit was unexpected, he ended up sleeping in a very austere room adorned by nothing but a grinning human skull. During this visit, the King was impressed by Alcade’s keen mind and humility, as well as the fact that the abbot had succeeded so well at staying out of politics that he was totally unknown at court.

The following day, the king was back in his palace, and the order of the day was to designate a bishop for Mexico. Immediately, the king said, “We will send the friar of the skull.” Although he didn’t remember the abbot’s name, he did remember that skull. From then on, Alcalde was known as “The Friar of the Skull.”

This anecdote, of course, is just the beginning of the story of Fray Antonio Alcalde. If you’d like to hear more—in an entertaining way—you need to catch the next performance of this operetta-musical, but “I have no idea when that will be,” says Vladimir Gómez. “My ultimate aim is to turn this into a real opera.”

We are standing by. Viva the Friar of the Skull!

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.

Record numbers of migrants are dying at Mexico-U.S. border

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MND Staff

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November 4, 2022

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The International Search Brigade for Disappeared Persons searches for signs of their loved ones along the Mexico-US border wall outside of Mexicali, in an area where migrants frequently cross. Adolfo Vladimir / Cuartoscuro.com

A record high of over 850 migrants died while attempting to enter the United States unlawfully from Mexico in the 12 months to the end of September, according to internal U.S. government data obtained by CBS News.

United States fiscal year 2022 was the deadliest year for migrants recorded by the U.S. government, CBS reported, citing internal Border Patrol statistics that showed that at least 853 migrants perished in the Rio Grande or on U.S. soil after entering that country illegally.

The figure is 56% higher than the previous record of 546 deaths, recorded by Border Patrol in fiscal year 2021, and underscores just how dangerous crossing into the U.S. between official ports of entry can be.

“Many migrants have drowned in the Rio Grande. Others have perished due to the extreme heat in the inhospitable desert terrain along some parts of the U.S. southern border,” CBS reported.

Migrants wade across the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico. File photo

“U.S. officials have also reported deadly falls from border barriers that migrants sometimes climb. But even when migrants successfully enter the U.S., the trek can still be deadly, as illustrated by the deaths of 53 migrants abandoned inside a tractor-trailer in June, the deadliest human smuggling case in U.S. history.”

The aunt of a Peruvian migrant who drowned in the Rio Grande along with eight others in September told CBS that her nephew traveled to the Mexico-U.S. border in pursuit of the “American dream.”

“My nephew’s death has left us devastated,” said Rose Lee, who lives in southern California. “It’s a very tragic death, to travel so far and die in an unknown place.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which oversees Border Patrol, told CBP that human smugglers — known in Mexico as coyotes or polleros — place migrants lives at risk.

“Smuggling organizations are abandoning migrants in remote and dangerous areas, leading to a rise in the number of rescues but also tragically a rise in the number of deaths,” Cecilia Barreda said in a statement.

“The terrain along the border is extreme, the summer heat is severe, and the miles of desert migrants must hike after crossing the border in many areas are unforgiving.”

Migrant policy analysts told CBS that the data showing there were 853 migrant deaths in fiscal year 2022 was likely an undercount due to data collection limits, while a report published in April by the United States Government Accountability Office said that Border Patrol was not collecting and reporting “complete data on migrant deaths.”

The record number of deaths coincided with a record number of encounters between U.S. authorities and migrants. CBP data shows that almost 2.4 million migrants were intercepted after crossing into the U.S. in fiscal year 2022, with that figure accounting for people who entered the country illegally more than once. It was the first time that more than 2 million migrant arrests were made at the U.S.-Mexico border during a fiscal year.

A holding facility for detained migrants. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol

CBP statistics show that Border Patrol completed just over 22,000 migrant “rescues” in the same period, a reference to operations to assist illegal border crossers who were in distress and at risk of dying. That figure was 72% higher than in fiscal year 2021.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Washington D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, said that crossing the border into the U.S. has become more dangerous, but she also acknowledged that the record number of migrants deaths occurred at a time when a lot more people are trying to enter the country unlawfully.

For decades, U.S. policy has focused on making it more difficult — and consequently more dangerous — for migrants to enter the U.S. illegally, she told CBS. However, Cardinal Brown said that the high number of migrant deaths is also a product of the actions of smuggling networks and the willingness of people to undertake dangerous journeys to escape from poverty and violence in their countries of origin.

Large numbers of Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and Central Americans from the northern triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have entered Mexico in recent years to travel to the border with the United States to try and enter that country, either by seeking asylum or crossing illegally.

“… Desperate people do desperate things, and desperate things are often dangerous things,” said Cardinal Brown, a former immigration official with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“Is there a role that U.S. policy plays? Well, yes. But there’s also the role of migrants in deciding to do this and the smugglers in encouraging it,” she said.

The Mexican government has appeased its United States counterpart by using the National Guard and immigration officers to stop migrants from reaching the northern border, but as the CBP data indicates, many have still made it to the U.S.

Those who have encountered Mexican authorities have been subjected to abuses such as arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and sexual violence, according to a report published by six non-governmental organizations earlier this year.

“Mexico has opted for the implementation of a migration policy without a human rights focus, making use of the National Guard and other military forces as an apparatus of migration control even when this goes against migration regulations and international human rights law,” the Bajo La Bota (Under the Boot) report said.

“… The National Guard members [carrying out] migration tasks don’t act as guarantors of rights but as agents of containment and deportation or even as generators of risks for migrants and their families.”

With reports from CBS News

Mexico-US nuclear energy agreement comes into force

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MND Staff

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November 4, 2022

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laguna verde gate — Laguna Verde in Veracruz is the only nuclear power plant operated by the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). Gob. de México

A nuclear energy agreement between Mexico and the United States took effect on Wednesday, the U.S. government said.

The Department of State said in a statement that the Agreement for Cooperation in Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy — signed by the two countries in 2018 and approved by Mexico’s Senate in March — had entered into force.

“The agreement will enhance our cooperation on energy security and strengthen our diplomatic and economic relationship,” the statement said.

“This is the first bilateral agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation between the United States and Mexico. The Agreement builds on the nearly 80 years of peaceful nuclear cooperation between our two countries and establishes the conditions for continued U.S. civil nuclear trade with Mexico.”

Inside the Laguna Verde nuclear power plant in Veracruz. Gob. de México

The State Department said that civil nuclear cooperation agreements “provide a legal framework for exports of nuclear material, equipment, and components from the United States to another country.”

The agreement with Mexico “provides a comprehensive framework for peaceful nuclear cooperation … based on a mutual commitment to nuclear nonproliferation,” the department said.

“It will permit the transfer of nuclear material, equipment (including reactors), components, and information for nuclear research and nuclear power production.”

Mexico’s state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) operates one nuclear power plant with two reactors — the Laguna Verde plant in the Veracruz municipality of Alto Lucero de Gutiérrez Barrios. A CFE official said in late 2019 that the company believed it was “advisable” to install two more reactors at that plant and two on the Pacific coast, but that hasn’t happened.

The United States has 54 nuclear power plants in 28 states, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Energy Minister Rocío Nahle has indicated she is open to the expansion of nuclear power in Mexico, and said in late 2020 that the CFE was considering building a small nuclear plant in Baja California. “Do we want more nuclear energy? Yes, I’m convinced,” she said at the time.

Nahle said on Twitter last year that nuclear energy is “clean, safe, constant and profitable,” adding that the two CFE reactors in Veracruz work “safely and efficiently in accordance with global safety standards, supervised by international organizations.”

Neither the energy minister nor the department she heads has commented on the entry into force of the agreement with the United States.

President López Obrador in a March meeting with U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar. Presidencia de la República

John Kerry, the United States special presidential envoy for climate, was in Mexico last week and met with President López Obrador to discuss renewable energy. Kerry said Wednesday that López Obrador was set to make a major announcement with regard to Mexico’s climate commitments.

“I was just in Mexico a few days ago and we will have a major announcement, which President López Obrador has agreed to with respect to what Mexico is now going to undertake,” he told a press conference ahead of his trip to Egypt to attend COP27, the 27th annual United Nations meeting on climate.

It was unclear whether Mexico might commit to increasing the generation of energy with nuclear reactors as part of a plan to cut emissions. The agreement with the U.S. could facilitate such an undertaking.

Nuclear reactors “do not produce direct carbon dioxide emissions” while operating, but “the processes for mining and refining uranium ore and making reactor fuel all require large amounts of energy”, according to the EIA.

López Obrador has championed the ongoing use of fossil fuels to generate power, but his government is also modernizing hydroelectric plants.

In a virtual address earlier this year to the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden, the president presented 10 “actions” Mexico is “implementing in the fight against climate change.”

Among the climate change-fighting actions cited by López Obrador were the modernization of 16 hydroelectric plants; Pemex’s investment of US $2 billion to reduce its methane gas emissions by up to 98%; the construction of a 1,000-megawatt solar farm in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora; and the planting of fruit and timber-yielding trees on 1 million hectares of land by means of the Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life) employment/reforestation program.

With reports from Reuters

Senate unanimously passes bill to double paid vacation for Mexican workers

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MND Staff

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November 4, 2022

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The Senate in session on Thursday. — The bill, first approved by the Senate in November, has now been finalized. Senado de México

On Thursday, the Senate unanimously approved a bill that modifies federal labor law to double annual leave for workers. For new employees, that would mean an increase from six to 12 days of annual paid leave after the first year of employment.

Entitled “Vacaciones Dignas Ya” (Decent Holidays Now), the bill also grants workers two days per subsequent year of service up to 20 days and, from the sixth year onward, paid leave would increase by two days for every five years of service until reaching the maximum statutory entitlement of 32 days.

The president of the Labor and Social Welfare Commission, Senator Napoleón Gómez Urrutia of the Morena party, explained that the bill seeks to guarantee more time off for rest and recreation. “Work is one of the many components of a full life. In the same way, we need free time for our personal development,” he said.

The current legislation has not been amended in 52 years, placing Mexico as one of the world economies with the shortest initial annual leave. According to data from the World Policy Analysis Center, this is only comparable with countries like Brunei, Malaysia, Uganda, the Philippines and Thailand. It is also way below the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) recommendation of at least 18 workdays based on a statutory six-day workweek.

Under the current scheme, it would take a worker in Mexico 45 years of service in the same company to equal the vacation period to which the labor force in Brazil or Panama is entitled from the first year of work.

At the same time, the World Health Organization has reported that Mexico ranks highest in the world for levels of work-related stress. These statistics go in hand with those from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which places Mexico as one of the member states with the highest working hours but one of the least productive.

The project was proposed in September by Citizens Movement party Senator Patricia Mercado and will next go to the lower house of Congress for a final vote. If approved, it will bring Mexico closer to meeting the ILO’s recommendation and could also increase productivity. “The issue at hand seeks to ensure that workers participate in productivity gains through better wages and more leisure time,” said Gómez Urrutia.

Assuming the bill goes on to become law, the new legal terms would affect all valid individual or collective work contracts at the time of the law’s entry into force, which is estimated for Jan. 1, 2023, or the day after its publication.

With reports from Forbes México, El Economista and El Canal del Congreso

Mexico was United States’ No. 1 trade partner in September, new data shows

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MND Staff

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November 3, 2022

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The Ensenada International Terminal in Baja California. Sherry V. Smith / Depositphotos

Mexico was the United States’ largest trade partner for a second consecutive month in September with two-way trade increasing 23% to more than US $67 billion, new data shows.

United States Census Bureau data shows that two-way trade totaled $67.4 billion in September, with almost 60% of that amount coming from Mexican exports to its northern neighbor.

Mexican exports were worth just over $39.5 billion in September while imports from the U.S. were worth just over $27.9 billion.

That left Mexico with a monthly trade surplus of almost $11.6 billion, a 25.3% increase compared to the same month last year.

The value of its exports — which include cars, computers, oil and agricultural products — was up 23.3% annually in September, while Mexico’s outlay on U.S. imports increased 22.5%. It was the 19th consecutive month that the value of Mexican exports to the U.S. increased on an annual basis.

The value of trade between Mexico and the United States was slightly higher than that between the U.S. and Canada in both August and September.

Mexico and the U.S. shipped goods worth $587.5 billion to each other in the first nine months of the year, a new record for the period and a 21% increase compared to last year. Mexican exports accounted for almost $341.7 billion, or 58%, of the total, while imports from the U.S. were worth $245.8 billion. Mexico thus had a trade surplus of $95.8 billion with the U.S. in the first nine months of the year, a new record high.

While Mexico was the United States No. 1 trade partner in August and September, it is in second spot behind Canada for the January-September period, as U.S.-Canada trade was worth a slightly higher $604.1 billion to the end of the latter month.

U.S.-China trade totaled just under $526.8 billion in the period, making the Asian economic powerhouse the No. 3 trade partner of the world’s largest economy in the first nine months of the year.

With reports from El Financiero, Reforma and El Economista

Mérida to host Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants awards

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MND Staff

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November 3, 2022

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LatAm50BR22-Manzanilla-LIP — A dish from Manzanilla restaurant in Ensenada, which is a runner up in the 51-100 awards list Photo: The World's 50 Best

Mérida will be host to the 10th annual Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants awards ceremony on Nov. 15. The event will bring together chefs and restaurateurs in-person for the first time since 2019 to showcase the fine dining scene in Latin America.

The 2021 top 50 list had 11 restaurants located in Mexico, including Pujol in Mexico City, Corazón de Tierra in Valle de Guadalupe and Chique in Cancún.

The voting panel includes 300 anonymous chefs, restaurant industry experts and food writers who nominate 10 restaurants where they had their best dining experiences in the last 18 months.

The 50 Best’s signature thought-leadership forum, known as #50BestTalks, will also take the stage as part of the program on Nov. 14.

This year’s theme of Cocina Consciente (Conscious Cooking) will bring together leaders in the industry to discuss working conditions, environmental and economic sustainability, healthier food, and ethical sourcing practices.

In the days leading up to the awards event, the city will also host the first edition of the Festival Sabores de Yucatán (Flavors of Yucatán festival), which will take place Nov. 11-13.

From wine and food tastings to masterclasses by renowned chefs, the festival aspires to be a “world-class event that year after year, attracts important chefs, cooks and traditional cooks, gastronomic leaders, critics, journalists and investors, to get to know the state’s gastronomic scene,” according to Michelle Fridman Hirsch, Minister of Tourism Development for Yucatán.

With reports from La Jornada Maya and The World’s 50 Best.

This popular pulque bar’s owner is a kindly, knife-wielding grandma

By

Leigh Thelmadatter

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November 3, 2022

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Dona Chencha, owner of La Flor de Mexquitic pulque bar in San Luis Potosi, Mexico — Doña Chencha fills the traditional clay mugs for serving pulque at La Flor de Mexquitic in the town of Maravillas, San Luis Potosí. Beloved by her regular patrons, she tolerates no shenanigans. Alejandro Ortiz/Facebook

The newspaper El Universal calls her San Luis Potosí’s “queen of pulque.” Her real name is María Crescencia Ortiz Hernández, but everyone calls her Doña Chencha, out of both familiarity and respect.

Her claim to fame is a small pulquería (pulque bar) called La Flor de Mexquitic in Maravillas, a San Luis Potosí community in the Mexquitic de Carmona municipality. The state capital is only a 20-minute drive from here, and urbanization is making its way here fast.

All the seating is outdoors or semi-outdoors, allowing you to enjoy the agaves, trees and surrounding farmland. Two local artists and I arrived on a Wednesday to find it nearly empty with just La Doña and a table filled with local regulars.

But this tranquility belies the fact that pulquerías in Mexico have every bit the dangerous reputation that biker bars do in the United States. Owning and running a pulque bar is not for the faint of heart. Nevertheless, Doña Chencha an 80-year-old woman, will tolerate no shenanigans. This becomes obvious when you enter, where there is a prominent sign warning, “If you come looking to fight, you will be thrown out.”

La Flor de Mexquitic pulque bar in Maravillas, San Luis Potosi, Mexico — Another satisfied customer drinks Doña Chencha’s pulque to the last drop. Carlos Burgos/Facebook

Doña Chencha speaks bluntly and directly and has absolutely no problem adding cuss words to make her point; she does not care what anyone thinks of her. When we asked her how she deals with unruly customers, she pulled out a small knife.

However, there is more to her story. Over the time we spent at the pulquería and talked to her, it became very obvious that she has a well-established relationship with the farm and construction workers that sat at the table for regulars. At first, they were tense, clearly wanting to know what these strangers wanted with her, then relaxed as the Doña did.

There is no doubt that these gentlemen (and they are gentlemen in their own way), would never hesitate to back Doña Chencha up. She is full of anecdotes, including one where she and the regulars threw out a woman who was threatening them as “the girlfriend of a local narco.”

She comes from a family that’s made pulque for several generations. She was already helping at the tender age of nine, and by age 17, was preparing her own batches to sell.

La Flor de Mexquitic pulqueria in Maravillas, San Luis Potosi, Mexico — La Flor de Mexquitic’s setup is simple, and much of the seating is outdoors, but it still attracts a crowd. Oscar Llanas/Google

For many years, she was a housewife, but when her husband died in 1982, she needed a way to make a living, so she turned back to what she knew: she established a pulquería on the land her husband left her. She had the full support of her family, and even today, many of her children and grandchildren set up stands in and around the bar to sell food to the crowds that come on weekends.

But despite being tough enough to keep a lid on the rowdiness that pulquerías are famous for, Doña Chencha is not invincible: thank goodness I made the trip out there with two local artists, Marissa Martínez and Eduardo Santillan: first of all, she had difficulty understanding my foreign accent, but when Martínez explained that I wanted to interview her, Chencha at first insisted that she “…didn’t have the vocabulary…” to do something like that.

Had I been there alone, I simply would have drunk a pulque to be polite and then left her in peace. But we sat at one of the tables and my two companions began to draw Doña Chencha into conversation about her life and the bar. At first, the answers were short as she passed by, but she eventually sat with us to chat. What would have been an awkward half-liter of pulque turned into a jovial experience for everyone, La Doña included.

La Flor de Mexquitic has managed to keep most of its rural, rustic charm. It is open everyday, but the best time to go for most people is on weekends, when it fills up with people from all over, including families. On weekends, there are not only pulques flavored with whatever fruits are in season but also a variety of homemade local foods. When available during its very short season in late summer, you can even find colonche, a fermented prickly-pear beverage.

La Flor de Mexquitic pulque bar, Maravillas, San Luis Potosí — Doña Chencha and her regulars. All but one insisted on the photo, and La Doña dragged him back inside.

But don’t wait too long to visit: as much as La Flor de Mexquitic is a local institution, its future is in doubt.

Doña Chencha is in good health, and even if retirement were an option, I doubt she would take it. But she is 80 years old. She has 10 children (not sure how many grandchildren she has), but despite the support from her family, there isn’t the same interest in making pulque among the younger generations.

She doesn’t blame them: they have educational and career opportunities that were unthinkable in her time.

To get directions to Doña Chencha’s pulquería, enter “Pulquería La Flor de Mexquitic” into Google.

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.

Mexico plagued by ‘firearms pandemic,’ foreign minister declares

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MND Staff

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November 3, 2022

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Foreign Minister Ebrard speaks at Thursday's event, "The business of death: arms trafficking in Mexico." Twitter @SRE_mx

Most of Mexico is in the grip of a “firearms pandemic,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Thursday.

Speaking in Mexico City at a conference on arms trafficking, Ebrard said that authorities have seized almost 56,000 guns since the beginning of 2020. He indicated that significant numbers of weapons have been confiscated in the vast majority of states.

“There are states in the republic, Yucatán and Oaxaca for example, where we’ve found very few [guns], except for in one part of the Isthmus [of Tehuantepec],” he said, referring to a region of the latter state.

“Outside there and the mountains of the north [of Mexico], our entire country is going through a firearms pandemic of different degrees of intensity,” Ebrard said.

The minister shared a map of the areas where the most weapons were confiscated. Twitter @SRE_mx

The foreign minister presented a map that showed where high numbers of guns were seized between January 1, 2020 and late September 2022. More than 3,200 firearms were confiscated in Tijuana — one of Mexico’s most violent cities — while almost 2,200 were taken off the streets of Ciudad Juárez.

Over 1,000 weapons were seized in three other cities — Guadalajara, Querétaro and León — while Reynosa (865), Nuevo Laredo (862), Mexicali (794), Cancún (737) and Celaya (731) were also hotspots for firearm confiscations.

Ebrard said it was no surprise that so many weapons were seized in Tijuana given that the border city has one of the highest murder rates in the country. He reiterated his view that the United States needs to do more to stop the flow of firearms into Mexico, asserting that combating the smuggling of guns can help the government to achieve its goal of further reducing homicides.

Ebrard said late last year that reducing violence in Mexico will be very difficult if the United States doesn’t do more to stop the illegal flow of weapons into the country, while he asserted last month that U.S. authorities should be checking vehicles leaving that country with the same thoroughness as they check those entering the U.S.

The foreign minister suggested Thursday that stopping the southward flow of weapons is a far easier task than combating the entry of drug precursors to Mexico and the northward flow of narcotics to the United States.

“The effort the United States has to make to drastically reduce the flow [of firearms] to Mexico is very small compared to the effort Mexico has to make to control precursor chemicals and [the flow of] drugs that reach the United States,” Ebrard said.

“… In other words, we’re not asking them to carry out a huge, difficult, complex, almost impossible operation,” he said.

After attending high-level security talks with United States officials in Washington last month, Ebrard said that Mexico and the U.S. had “a common plan for 2023: … to drastically reduce the trafficking of weapons to Mexico and … to increase controls on precursor chemicals and the movement of fentanyl [to the United States].”

A car passes through a scanner along the U.S. border. — U.S. border agents have already begun scanning vehicles leaving that country at some areas along the Mexico-U.S. border. Josh Denmark / U.S. CBP

The federal government believes that more than 200,000 guns are smuggled into the country each year, meaning that for every firearm seized since 2020, about 10 crossed the border into Mexico.

Official data published by the newspaper Milenio this week shows that Mexican and U.S. authorities seize just a tiny fraction of that number at the two countries’ shared border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows that that agency confiscated just 982 firearms during the 2022 U.S. fiscal year, which ended September 30.

Mexican customs officers seized just 416 guns in northern border states during the same period, meaning that authorities of both countries confiscated a grand total of 1,398 firearms during 12 months — 0.7% of the estimated 200,000 weapons that flow into the country annually.

Ebrard asserted Thursday that Mexican authorities “won’t allow” U.S. firearms seizures to remain so low, and suggested that Mexico could even pay for equipment to facilitate inspections of Mexico-bound vehicles. “I hope it doesn’t get to that, that we’ll reach some agreement,” he said.

President López Obrador and U.S. President Joe Biden said in a joint statement earlier this year that Mexico and the U.S. are “committed like never before to completing a multi-year joint U.S.-Mexico border infrastructure modernization effort for projects along the 2,000-mile border.”

Mexico committed to invest US $1.5 billion on border infrastructure while the U.S. pledged $3.4 billion for projects at its southern and northern borders. Those investments should improve both countries ability to detect illegal goods such as weapons and drugs.

In addition to pressuring the United States government, Mexico is seeking to hold U.S. gun manufacturers and vendors to account for the role they play in illegal arms trafficking. The federal government announced last month that it would appeal the dismissal of its lawsuit against United States gun manufacturers, which it accuses of negligent business practices. It has also filed a separate suit against five gun stores in Arizona, accusing them of involvement in illegal arms trafficking to Mexico, where firearms are used to commit tens of thousands of homicides annually.

With reports from Reforma and Milenio

El Chapo’s hometown in Sinaloa could get a drug trafficking museum

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MND Staff

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November 3, 2022

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Badiraguato, Sinaloa, where town fathers are considering building a narco hismuseum — Badiraguato's mayor says that the municipality should embrace rather than deny the town's notoriety as the birthplace of drug kingpins Joaquín Guzman, Rafael Caro Quintero and José Esparragoza, Government of Badiraguato

A “narco-museum” could soon open in the birthplace of convicted drug lord and former Sinaloa Cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

The mayor of Badiraguato, a municipality in the northern state of Sinaloa about 80 kilometers northeast of Culiacán, recently said that he’s open to the idea of a museum that tells the stories of notorious drug traffickers such as El Chapo, Rafael Caro Quintero, current Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and Juan José “El Azul” Esparragoza, an ex-leader of the same cartel.

El Chapo – sentenced to life in a U.S. prison in 2019 after being convicted on drug trafficking and organized crime charges – was born in La Tuna, a small community in the municipality of Badiraguato, which borders Durango and Chihuahua. Caro Quintero and Esparragoza, like Guzmán, were born in Badiraguato, while Zambada was born in a small town in the neighboring municipality of Culiacán.

Mayor José Luis López Elenes described Badiraguato as a traffickers’ “cradle” and asserted that “we can’t deny our history.”

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman in 2017 in U.S. custody — Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán in 2017 after being extradited to the United States. DEA

“We have to acknowledge it, and we’re going to work on that basis. It’s possible that we could have a drug trafficking museum; we’re not closed-minded on any issue. We’re going to listen to all … [ideas],” he said in recorded remarks disseminated by the news website Noticiero Altavoz.

“We’re a government that listens to [people’s] voices,” the Morena party mayor added. Despite being receptive to the possibility of creating a narco-museum, López said that his government was aiming to “overcome the stigma of drug trafficking” via the economic development of Badiraguato.

Sinaloa’s governor, however, doesn’t like the idea of a narco museum. “I don’t share that point of view at all, and I emphatically reject the idea of building a museum of drug trafficking in Badiraguato,” Rubén Rocha Moya said.

If the mayor’s idea is acted upon, the museum would be housed in a 14-million-peso (US $711,000) regional museum building that is currently under construction. Whether the project goes ahead appears likely to hinge on the advice of “museum specialists.”

Sinaloa Governor Rubén Rocha Moya, left, said he “emphatically” opposes the idea of a narco museum. Rubén Rocha Moya/Twitter

“If they tell us that having a narco museum will benefit the municipality of Badiraguato, we’ll promote it from government,” López said.

A narco museum there could perhaps be similar – albeit on a smaller scale – to Las Vegas’ The Mob Museum, which hosted a speaking event exploring “the rise and fall of El Chapo” earlier this year.

Mexico City has a narco museum, first built in 1986 as a training room for soldiers inside a Defense Ministry (Sedena) facility but converted into a museum in 2002. The Museo del Enervante (The Illicit Drug Museum) displays objects confiscated during Mexico’s drug war. However, it is not open to the general public, only by written request and at Sedena’s discretion.

With reports from Reforma

Employers association calls on government to expand cybersecurity efforts

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MND Staff

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November 3, 2022

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A computer screen showing multi-colored code. — Part of the problem is a global shortage of cybersecurity specialists, Coparmex said. Ilya Pavlov via Unsplash

Business leaders are worried about national cybersecurity in light of the September hack of the Defense Ministry (Sedena), and have urged the federal government to take action in a statement released last week.

In a document titled “Sedena’s hack: serious and concerning,” the national employers association (Coparmex) expressed its concern regarding the hack. The statement emphasized that investment in cybersecurity should be a priority for both companies and governments and lamented that Mexico doesn’t have a cybersecurity law.

The association said that “The need for a Federal Law on Cybersecurity has been made clear […] to quickly deal with this type of threat in a world increasingly dependent on information technologies.”

After the Ministry was hacked, Coparmex insisted that Sedena and all government agencies responsible for national security and public security need to be strengthened — particularly cyber units to combat crimes such as extortion, “which has grown by a 55.6% between the years 2018 and 2022 (according to numbers from the first four months),” said the statement, which was published last week.

A Coparmex graphic displays the name of the associations new report, "Serious and concerning: the Sedena Hack." — A Coparmex graphic displays the name of the associations new report, “Serious and concerning: the Sedena Hack.” Coparmex

Back in September, the Guacamaya group of Central American hackers leaked thousands of internal Sedena emails to the media outlet Latinus. Among the information leaked there was information relating to impunity in sexual assault cases within Sedena; the recruitment of chemistry professors by the Sinaloa Cartel to produce fentanyl; and the risk of collapse of a section of the Maya Train, among other sensitive information.

Coparamex noted that though the national security budget has increased, most of that increase has gone to Sedena, often for “emblematic works” of AMLO’s administration like infrastructure projects, which are not strictly security-related. This contrasts with the Security Ministry budget for 2023, which had a 1% increase and “which doesn’t respond to current needs,” Coparmex remarked.

Similarly, the National Institute for Transparency and Access to Information (INAI), called on Congress to increase the cybersecurity budget by 30 million pesos (US $1.5 million), arguing that in July alone, the institute registered more than 60 million cyberattacks.

The statement also mentioned a lack of cybersecurity specialists, saying that the world is short at least 2 million workers relative to demand for employees and that Mexico’s government should closely work alongside universities to design programs on cybersecurity and motivate students to enroll in such programs. “Mexico must join the effort and bring alternatives to young people in these areas,” the INAI statement said.

The statement also mentioned what other countries have done in the matter, such as the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, Australia, Germany, and the United States. “There’s no doubt that investment in security needs to be rethought looking at other countries’ examples […] Biden signed an executive order in May 2021 designed to encourage cybersecurity initiatives, named a national chief cyber officer to oversee digital security policies and announced measures to protect his information systems.”

Coparmex also called on the government to consider cyberspace as an extension of Mexican territory. “There needs to be a master plan to guide all the initiatives on cybersecurity and that facilitates a cross-government coordination, considering cyberspace as another part of the national territory which demands its defense system,” it said.

“The seriousness of the case warrants recognition of the full scale [of the problem],” Coparmex concluded. “… Not only is national security at risk, but also people’s lives.”

With reports from El Economista and Proceso