The president officially announced the planned January 22 consultation at his Tuesday press conference.
The federal government will once again ask citizens to have their say about an issue of national importance — this time with a public-security-themed “participative exercise” to be held early next year.
The choice of language is meant to distinguish the upcoming exercise on January 22 from a consulta (essentially, a referendum), something which President López Obrador said at a press conference on Tuesday isn’t allowed by the constitution when dealing with matters of national security. “… we have to act within the framework of legality,” he said.
In the nationwide survey, citizens will have the opportunity to respond to three questions about the National Guard and the armed forces, Interior Minister Adán Augusto López Hernández said at the Tuesday news conference:
“Do you agree with the creation of the National Guard and [approve of] its performance to date?”
“Do you think the armed forces – the army and the navy – should continue doing public security work until 2028 or return to their barracks in March of 2024?”
Mexicans will be able to answer the survey at “public opinion reception points” in all 68,989 “electoral sections” across the country, Interior Minister Adán Augusto López said.
Government critics have questioned the legality and reliability of consultas and other such citizen surveys, and assert that the president only holds them to promote his own political interests. Opponents have similarly criticized this planned exercise, with federal deputy and president of the Chamber of Deputies’ directive board Santiago Creel recently calling the January 22 poll “undue interference” by President Lopez Obrador in the legislature’s role in deciding such a matter.
If a majority of citizens vote in favor of continuing to use the military for public security until 2028, the government could use the result to pressure Congress to legislate accordingly. López Obrador is a devotee of direct democracy, having held numerous public consultations/referendums in recent years, including ones on the previous government’s Mexico City airport project, a Mexicali brewery project, the Maya Train, past presidents and even his own right to rule.
López Hernández said that the aim of the upcoming exercise is for citizens to have the opportunity to have their say on the National Guard and military at “public opinion reception points” in all 68,989 “electoral sections” across the country.
Deputy Santiago Creel has accused the president of putting “social pressure” on legislators to support the bill, which appears unlikely to pass in the Senate.
The Interior Ministry and a citizens’ committee will be responsible for the organization of the “participative exercise,” he said, also noting that people will also be able to participate via an online portal set up for the purpose between January 16 and 22. “This option could even be used by Mexicans who live abroad,” he said.
The “definitive results” of the exercise will be announced on January 24, he told reporters. He also said that a promotion campaign for the survey will begin on October 10 and run until January 16.
“As the president has said, it’s not a binding exercise,” López Hernández said.
“It won’t be binding,” Lopez Obrador said at the beginning of the press conference, “but what matters to us is that participatory democracy advances because democracy means people power.”
“Demos is people, kratos is power, power of the people. And in democracy, the people are in charge and cannot be ignored,” he said.
"Open your franchise," trumpet billboards for former president Vicente Fox's Paradise stores for marijuana-derived products. (Archive)
Former president and marijuana entrepreneur Vicente Fox has urged lawmakers and authorities to legalize and regulate the recreational use of cannabis, asserting that doing so will reduce cartels’ income and create economic opportunities for ordinary Mexicans.
Fox – part owner of a chain of stores that sells products such as CBD (cannabidiol) oil, hemp oil, bongs, pipes, marijuana grinders and papers – said in a recent interview with the El Economista newspaper that he doesn’t understand why legalization and regulation haven’t happened.
“Legalizing and regulating this industry will take a lot of revenue away from cartels” and put it in the hands of marijuana growers and businesspeople, he said.
“Nobody has died from consuming marijuana anywhere in the world,” Fox said in a recent interview. Vicente Fox/Instagram
“In that way we can convert an illegal industry into an authorized industry, an industry that generates opportunities for Mexicans,” said Fox, president from 2000 to 2006 and a seasoned marijuana advocate.
“I started in this 20 years ago,” he told El Economista, referring to his advocacy for marijuana legalization.
“Sometimes people ask why [former] president Fox is involved in this, if he is a druggie or pothead – a lot of people make jokes,” Fox said. “I’m involved in this because I’m totally convinced that legalizing marijuana is [the way] to pull the rug out from under the cartels.”
The 80-year-old ex-president called on authorities to put regulations in place for the production, processing and recreational use of marijuana, which has effectively been decriminalized by the SCJN and is smoked openly in some parts of the country, including Mexico City and Oaxaca city.
A Pardise franchise in Villahermosa, Tabasco.
Fox noted that marijuana has been legalized in many countries around the world and asserted that use of the plant “doesn’t cause harm to anyone.”
“Nobody has died from consuming marijuana anywhere in the world,” he said, adding that legalization of marijuana could open the door to Mexico becoming a significant producer and exporter of the plant.
“Many things can be done with this product in Mexico like those we’ve already done with vegetables, with berries, with so many products of which Mexico is an export champion,” Fox said.
The former president is involved in the staging of Canna México, a cannabis “world summit” that will be held at Centro Fox in the municipality of San Francisco del Rincón, Guanajuato, on October 19 and 20. Promoting the event last week, Fox reiterated the need to take the marijuana business out of the hands of criminals.
“We have to move from the shadows to the truth on this issue in order to take this beautiful plant from the hands of criminals who only cause harm, blackmail, rob and kill,” he said.
Putting marijuana in “the hands of businesspeople and doctors” would represent a “great transformation of this industry” – one that has already occurred in other parts of the world, Fox said.
Once recreational marijuana use is eventually approved – something that is considered inevitable given the SCJN’s directive – Mexico will become the world’s largest legal marijuana market. One municipality keen to take advantage of legalization is Tetecala, Morelos, where farmers believe that marijuana could be a more profitable crop than the sugar cane they have long grown.
Members of the Chamber of Deputies' energy committee voted Monday to send a propsal to eliminate daylight saving time in most of Mexico to a full vote. Mexican Congress
The energy committee of the lower house of Congress has approved a bill proposing the elimination of daylight saving time in most of the country, bringing the practice of changing clocks twice a year one step closer to obsolescence.
Sent to Congress by President López Obrador in July, the bill was supported by deputies with the ruling Morena party and its allies at a vote held Monday. A total of 22 energy committee members voted in favor of the proposal, 11 abstained and just one opposed it.
The bill – which proposes a new Time Zones Law – will now be considered by all 500 deputies, with debate and a vote slated to be held Wednesday. If it passes the Chamber of Deputies, the bill will face a vote in the Senate.
The proposal – which would allow northern border municipalities to continue to observe daylight saving time in order to stay in sync with the U.S. states they adjoin – only requires a simple majority to pass the federal legislature, meaning that it is likely to become law. With the support of its allies, Morena commands a majority in both the lower and upper houses.
Energy Committee President Manuel Rodríguez González oversees the debate on the proposal, which was sent to Congress by President López Obrador in July. Mexican Congress
Members of the energy committee who voted in favor of the elimination of daylight saving time argued that the savings generated by the time change have been minimal while the impact on people’s physical and mental health has been significant.
López Obrador, a longtime critic of daylight saving time – first introduced in Mexico in 1996 by then-president Ernesto Zedillo – said in June that a study completed by the Energy Ministry in conjunction with the Health Ministry and the Federal Electricity Commission concluded that daylight saving time generates savings of about 1 billion pesos (US $49.1 million) a year across Mexico.
“The conclusion is that the damage to health is greater than the importance of economic savings,” he said.
Reginaldo Sandoval, a deputy with the Labor Party, recalled Monday that the argument for establishing daylight saving time in 1996 was mainly an economic one based on the expected reduction in electricity use.
“Nothing could be further from the truth because the [electricity] consumption saving is marginal,” he said. “The decision [to introduce daylight saving time] was political with a very strong ideological weight because we were at the peak time of the neoliberal model, when they even wanted to privatize time.”
Morena Deputy Joaquín Zebadúa asserted that the introduction of daylight saving time hasn’t led to lower power bills for households as promised. He also said that some communities in his home state of Chiapas don’t observe daylight saving time because they allow “God’s time” to prevail.
“Summer time [daylight saving time] is an unjust norm, … there is no saving [generated],” Zebadúa added.
Similarly, Energy Minister Rocío Nahle said earlier this year that daylight saving time has made no positive impact on family expenditure. “According to scientific evidence, there are no significant changes in sunlight in countries near the tropics. Therefore there is no justification,” she said.
President López Obrador has brought various members of his government to his press conferences to speak in favor of ending the clock change and has argued that citizens want to end the annual ritual. Presidencia
Lidia Pérez Bárcenas, another Morena deputy, said Monday that the introduction of daylight saving time in Mexico has caused an increase in health problems such as heart disease and mental health issues. Health Minister Jorge Alcocer has previously cited numerous health issues associated with the twice-yearly time change, including heart attacks, “especially in the first week after it is implemented.”
“Humans have biological clocks that are tasked with regulating the functions of different proteins and organs. … The time change alters the time we’re exposed to the sun and throws our biological clocks off balance,” Alcocer said in early July.
Morena Deputy Judith Celina Tánori Córdova, secretary of the Chamber of Deputies’ energy committee, made similar remarks on Monday.
The Interior Ministry conducted a telephone poll earlier this year that found 71% support for the elimination of daylight saving time, while López Obrador has stressed that “people don’t want the time change” and predicted that Congress will pass his bill.
The United States is also considering doing away with twice-yearly time changes, but in contrast to Mexico, the proposal there is to make daylight saving time permanent. The U.S. Senate passed a bill to that end in March, but it still requires approval from the House of Representatives before it can be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The U.S. state of Arizona has not observed daylight saving time since 1968.
The Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Ontario have also passed measures to move to permanent daylight saving time but have been waiting to implement changes in order to coordinate with border states in the U.S. and/or other Canadian provinces. Many areas of Saskatchewan already do not observe daylight saving time, and the Yukon voted in 2020 to make daylight saving time permanent.
A shot of 100% sargassum-free beach landscape recorded Sunday in Cancun's hotel zone. Webcams de México
The sargassum season is drawing to a close in Quintana Roo, the only Mexican state with a coastline on the Caribbean Sea.
“Autumn arrived and the sargassum is going!!” the Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring Network posted on Facebook. The trusted source for tracking seaweed amounts on the state’s beaches also posted a map on Sunday showing that most beaches in the northern part of the state have very low levels of the pesky seaweed.
Just five beaches on the map, all on the eastern coast of Cozumel, have abundant amounts, while eight have moderate quantities.
“The quantity of sargassum arriving on our beaches has decreased significantly in the past 10 days, which is expected due to the change in sea currents and above all to the direction and magnitude of the prevailing winds,” the organization said.
The Quintana Roo Sargassum Monitoring Network’s map published on Sunday, showing no state beaches with an “excessive” rating for seaweed and only five left with an “abundant” amount.
Sargassum levels will decline further as autumn progresses and the seaweed will disappear completely at the end of the year when winter begins, the monitoring network said. The next sargassum season – an annual headache for the tourism industry and visitors to some of Mexico’s most popular beaches – will begin next spring, it said.
The monitoring organization said that with the seaweed’s disappearance, water off the coast of Quintana Roo and beaches along it will be cleaner, with only “isolated, low-intensity arrivals” of sargassum, which is not only a blight on white sand beaches but can pose a risk to human health as it rots.
Authorities spend significant amounts of money to keep beaches as clean as possible, removing sargassum with machines and manually from both the sand and sea. Barriers have also been installed along some sections of coast to stop the seaweed from reaching the shore.
Meanwhile, off the coast of Tulum, the navy – which leads the federal government’s anti-sargassum strategy – recently completed the installation of barriers measuring a total of 2.4 kilometers.
They were supposed to be in place by March in order to trap seaweed this sargassum season, but the installation project was delayed for unspecified reasons.
Water became an extremely scarce commodity in Monterrey during the worst of the drought, with residents going days at a time without water access.
Nuevo León Governor Samuel García has declared that the state’s water crisis is over, but warned citizens they must reduce their water use to ensure there is enough of the vital liquid for future generations.
“We no longer have a crisis,” the Citizens Movement party governor said at the launch of a water-saving campaign on Sunday.
Like many states, Nuevo León has been affected by drought, and harsh water restrictions were implemented in the metropolitan area of Monterrey in early June. But recent rains replenished dams in the northern border state, allowing authorities to ease restrictions.
“All of us now have water in our homes,” García said at Sunday’s event, held in the municipality of Santiago, where the La Boca dam is located.
Estamos haciendo todo lo que está en nuestras manos para que haya agua en Nuevo León: bombardeamos nubes, recuperamos agua robada, hacemos nuevos pozos y muchas acciones más que están contempladas en nuestro plan para garantizar el agua hasta el 2050. ¡Hazlo ahorra! pic.twitter.com/4GMChFNDTb
“In the new Nuevo León, we are working so that there’s water for everyone,” says a new government public service announcement that urges residents to save water for future generations.
“We’re no longer in crisis, but now comes the most important thing – we have to set an example in looking after water,” he said.
The governor and his wife, Mariana Rodríguez, launched a campaign called “Ciudadanos de 100,” which encourages citizens to use no more than 100 liters of water per day.
“It’s very important for us to promote a new water culture,” García said. “… We’re going to make the effort to consume [no more than] 100 liters per day. If we want there to always be water, we have to always look after it.”
The governor and Rodríguez, a social media influencer who heads up a state government agency called Amar a Nuevo León (Love Nuevo León), advocated water-saving measures such as taking short showers, turning off the tap while brushing your teeth and using a bucket to wash your car.
“We’re going to be citizens that consume less than 100 liters [of water] per day and in that way we’re going to guarantee that there is always water for our children and grandchildren,” García said.
Rodríguez said that entire families must make the decision to “build new habits and a new water-saving culture.”
“If we’re all part of the problem, we’re all part of the solution, so let’s be ciudadanos de 100 [model citizens] in water [usage] and everything,” she said.
Family members of the 43 kidnapped students and their supporters mark the anniversary of the disappearance annually.
More details have emerged about the Ayotzinapa case in which 43 students disappeared in Guerrero on September 26, 2014.
An investigative journalist and columnist for the Reforma newspaper obtained an unredacted copy of the Ayotzinapa truth commission’s recent report on the case and offered a summary of its gory contents.
Meanwhile, the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) successfully requested the revocation of 21 of 83 arrest warrants issued by a federal judge last month, according to a report by the El País newspaper.
In a column published by Reforma on Saturday, Peniley Ramírez wrote that “almost all” of the 43 Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College students were murdered, dismembered and buried on the night of September 26, 2014.
Peniley Ramírez, an investigative journalist, recently shared details of the unredacted report given to her by an unnamed source.
Based on the truth commission report that was recently submitted to the FGR, Ramírez’s column provided further evidence against the previous government’s so-called “historical truth” – that the students’ bodies were burned at a dump in the municipality of Cocula, Guerrero, after they were murdered by members of the Guerreros Unidos crime gang following their abduction in Iguala.
The Guerreros Unidos criminals – who allegedly believed the students were members of a rival gang – “thought about burning them, but there were a lot of bodies and they changed their mind,” Ramírez wrote. “They divvied them up [and], each criminal group got rid of the remains … as they could.”
Five bodies were dissolved in acid, but most of the students were hacked up and buried, Ramírez wrote.
Six students who were not killed on the night of September 26 after buses on which they were traveling were intercepted by Iguala police were allegedly taken to a warehouse on the outskirts of that city the next day. They were allegedly murdered days later on the orders of José Rodríguez Pérez, who was an army colonel at the time and later became a general.
He and three other army personnel accused of involvement in the case are now in custody, as is former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam, who is considered the key architect of the allegedly fabricated “historical truth.”
The truth commission report – of which a redacted version was made publicly available last month – asserts that the military played a central role in the disappearance of the students. It also implicates government officials, including then-mayor of Iguala José Luis Abarca – who was allegedly complicit with the Guerreros Unidos – and Tomás Zerón, who was head of the now-defunct Criminal Investigation Agency.
Ramírez wrote that Abarca “advised his contacts in the army that Tomás Zerón, sent by [then-president] Enrique Peña Nieto, had proposed that he ask for leave and disappear.”
Zerón allegedly offered to help the mayor leave the country if he first admitted he was behind the murder of the students.
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas, president of the Ayotzinapa truth commission, called on the federal Attorney General to arrrest the person responsible for leaking the report to Ramírez.
“From September 29 [2014], the coverup started,” Ramírez wrote. “In the chats where they had previously coordinated the murders, criminals, officials and military men spoke about how to dig up the bodies to take them to the [base of the] 27th infantry battalion. Nobody would go in there. In the middle of November, they were still digging up and moving bodies,” she said.
“… A few weeks ago, [the government’s] Commission for Truth and Access to Justice in the Ayotzinapa Case published a report. … A public version of the report was disseminated in which almost the entire account, and the messages that the participants, their partners and their children exchanged, are redacted. The messages show the shame of that night and the following weeks and months,” Ramírez wrote.
“… This report opens up new … lines of investigation, suggests new places to look for the remains. The commission believes that Ayotzinapa was a crime of the state. … The source who shared the document with me told me that he [or she] was doing so because he [or she] believes that investigating these new clues is vital,” she wrote.
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas, president of the truth commission, expressed a very different view, saying that the leaking of the unredacted report could compromise the investigation.
“I condemn the regrettable leaking of the information submitted to the FGR,” he wrote on Twitter.
“… It’s completely irresponsible and [shows] a lack of respect to the fathers and mothers of the missing students. … Far from helping the investigation, these kinds of leaks are detrimental to it and open the way to impunity. I ask the FGR to initiate an investigation to identify and punish whoever is responsible for this serious leak,” Encinas said.
Ramírez defended the publication of her column, writing on Twitter on Sunday that “journalism tells the truth” and “helps us to understand our society, even though it hurts.”
Revelations about the army’s alleged involvement in the students’ disappearance have triggered protests and attacks at military facilities as the crime’s eighth anniversary nears.
El País said the same day that it had obtained documents showing that the same judge who issued 83 arrest warrants against Ayotzinapa suspects had revoked at least 21 of them at the request of the FGR. Only four of the warrants – issued for the arrest of military commanders and soldiers, administrative and judicial officials in Guerrero, municipal and state police officers and Guerreros Unidos members – have been executed.
Sixteen of the 21 canceled warrants correspond to army personnel, 15 of whom were accused of involvement in the forced disappearance of the students, El País said. A México state-based federal judge has also revoked warrants for the arrest of former Guerrero Attorney General Iñaki Blanco, a Guerrero-based judge and three judicial officials in that state.
The FGR’s request to have the warrants revoked is curious because it applied for them just last month. Citing sources close to the case, El País reported a breakdown in relations between the FGR itself and the unit within the same agency that is in charge of the investigation into the Ayotzinapa case.
Differing opinions held by Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero and the Ayotzinapa unit over the pace of the prosecution against Murillo Karam are responsible for the “rupture,” El País said. The FGR reportedly requested the revocation of the 21 warrants against the wishes of the Ayotzinapa unit.
Revelations about the army’s alleged involvement in the students’ disappearance have triggered protests and attacks at military facilities in the lead-up to the eighth anniversary of the heinous crime. An army base in Guerrero capital Chilpancingo was attacked by Ayotzinapa students after a protest on September 13, while a Mexico City base was targeted last Friday.
With the revocation of warrants against 16 army personnel allegedly involved in the Ayotzinapa case, the anger of students and parents of the missing 43 looks likely to intensify. A protest march marking the passing of eight years since the students disappeared will take place in Mexico City on Monday. Past marches, in the national capital and elsewhere, have turned violent.
The cloud computing company has announced plans to build Mexico's first 'local zone,' in the city of Querétaro. It will also build offices in Monterrey and Guadalajara. deposit photos
Amazon Web Services (AWS), a subsidiary of e-commerce behemoth Amazon, will increase its presence in Mexico in early 2023.
The firm, a provider of cloud computing services to individuals, companies and governments, will open a “local zone,” or hub, in Querétaro in the first quarter of next year, according to the firm’s Mexico director Luis Velasco.
It will also open new offices in Guadalajara and Monterrey in the first three months of next year, Velasco said at the AWS tech conference in Mexico City last week.
According to the AWS website, local zones are a type of infrastructure deployment that places computing, storage, database, and other select AWS services close to large population and industry centers.
AWS Vice President for Latin America Jaime Vallés said that the cloud computing market in the region could reach a worth of US $500 billion.
Velasco told the news agency Reuters that the Querétaro local zone will boost bandwidth for AWS clients, which will aid online activities such as video streaming. Reuters reported that AWS local zones “run applications for real-time gaming, hybrid migrations, media and entertainment content creation, and engineering simulations.”
Business Insider México said that the Querétaro local zone could help clients to comply with data localization requirements.
Data localization is “the act of storing data on any device that is physically present within the borders of a specific country where the data was generated,” according to IT education site Techopedia.
“Free flow of digital data, especially data which could impact government operations or operations in a region, is restricted by some governments. Many attempt to protect and promote security across borders and therefore encourage data localization.”
Business Insider México said that the Querétaro hub would benefit industries such as gaming, telecommunications and financial services as it will allow data to be transferred more quickly.
AWS already has an “edge location” in the state of Querétaro, whose capital, Santiago de Querétaro, is about 220 kilometers northwest of Mexico City. “Edge locations are AWS data centers designed to deliver services with the lowest latency possible,” according to Last Week in AWS, a website that reports on the company.
Jaime Vallés, AWS’s vice president for Latin America, told the EFE news agency that the company will keep investing in Mexico and the broader region while its customers “continue asking” for its services. He didn’t disclose how much AWS was spending to open the new local zone and the offices in Guadalajara and Monterrey but did say that the cloud computing market in Latin America has the potential to be worth US $500 billion.
Demand for cloud services has grown 31% since 2020 but there is still “enormous opportunity for growth,” Vallés said.
Velasco said AWS will collaborate with Mexican companies to expand its activities here. Telecommunications company Totalplay, for example, will partner with AWS to increase the latter’s presence in the Mexican cloud computing market, according to Fernando Zamora, Totalplay’s director of products and marketing.
Zamora explained that Totalplay – owned by business magnate Ricardo Salinas – will provide consulting for AWS’s cloud services.
He said that Mexico is the fourth most important cloud computing market in the Americas after the United States, Canada and Brazil. The Mexican market was worth $1.4 billion in 2021 but could grow to $2.7 billion in 2025, Zamora said at the AWS tech conference.
AWS describes itself as “the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally.”
“Millions of customers – including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster,” it says on its website.
In April, the Navy was formally installed on a base on the islands in a ceremony attended by President López Obrador. Government of Mexico
María Madre Island, a small island 112 kilometers off the coast of Nayarit that housed a penal colony for more than 100 years, is on its way to becoming a tourist destination and will be managed by the Ministry of the Navy (Semar).
The Ministry of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) publicly announced last week the creation of a majority state-owned company called Turística Integral Islas Marías S.A. de C.V — which becomes the first state company of the seven created during the administration of President López Obrador to be run by the armed forces.
“It will carry out all the necessary actions for the provision of tourist services considered to have low environmental impact,” SHCP said in a report published in the Official Gazette of the Federation. “[Semar] will also obtain … concessions, permits, licenses, authorizations and, in general, execute all the necessary acts” to make the island a tourist destination.
The island prison was well-known by Mexicans and part of popular culture, including in the 1951 Mexican film “Las Islas Marías,” starring the iconic singer Pedro Infante and still viewable on streaming services and YouTube.There was also a 2015 novel by Martin Luis Guzman about an attempted mutiny and escape from the island prison titled Islas Marías.
The islands are located within reach of major tourist destinations, especially San Blas, Nayarit, and Puerta Vallarta. Government of Mexico
An initial amount of 1 million pesos (US $49,184) is being made available from the federal government to start the project, after which it will subsist by generating its own income, according to reports.
María Madre Island, the largest island in the Islas Marías Archipelago, served as a prison complex starting in 1905. But in early 2019, the storied penitentiary was closed by presidential decree with the aim of using the area for tourism and environmental development.
The Environment Ministry (Semarnat) and the Tourism Ministry (Sectur) have been working on the project for a year, but last week’s announcement formalized the leadership role for the navy.
López Obrador visited the area in March 2021, traveling by boat from San Blas, Nayarit. During that voyage, the president explained that the navy ship on which he was being transported could carry as many as 170 passengers and later would be fully converted into a tourist ferry.
The federal government thinks the archipelago off Nayarit will make a good tourist site due to its UNESCO nature reserve and the history of the famous prison known to many Mexicans.
Made up of four main islands, and five tiny ones sometimes called “rocks,” the archipelago has largely been uninhabited except for the prison on María Madre Island. Part of the municipality of San Blas, the islands are about 325 kilometers from the tip of the Baja California peninsula.
They are known as the “Tres Marías” islands because three of them were named after women named Mary in the New Testament: Isla María Madre is the largest at 14,5000 hectares, followed by Isla María Magdalena (7,050 hectares) and Isla María Cleofas (2,000 hectares). The even smaller San Juanito (900 hectares) is the fourth main islet.
Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (a cousin of Hernán Cortés) was said to be the first European who landed on the islands, in 1532; he named them and reported no evidence of any prior habitation. Several hundred years later, a penitentiary was built there.
When López Obrador announced its closure, he said the main buildings would be converted into a cultural and environmental education center to be named after José Revueltas, the prison’s most famous inmate.
The Tres Marias Islands host impressive biodiversity and more species have been found there since the prison closed. This Tres Marías deer mouse is only known to exist on the archipelago. Juan Cruzado Cortés/Creative Commons
While incarcerated there, the progressive Mexican writer and prisoner penned his first book, Los Muros de Agua (The Walls of Water), which was published in 1941.
The Islas Marías federal prison housed as many as 45,000 prisoners who could live in semi-liberty and work in companies installed on the island; many engaged in agriculture, farming and fishing. Unlike harsh penal colonies such as France’s Devil’s Island, this was a “prison without walls” that housed mostly low-risk prisoners — and some were even allowed to live with their families.
The Tres Marías Islands — part grasslands, part tropical forest with a mean temperature of 84–89 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and occasional tropical storms and hurricanes — were designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2010, which gave it new protections. Home to a diverse array of flora and fauna, including raccoons, cottontail rabbits and Amazon parrots, it has about 54 species there reportedly in some category of risk.
Since the prison’s closure, researchers have found 21 species of sharks, 10 kinds of rays, three species of sea turtles and healthy coral reefs and many sea birds that nest and feed there.
People will be able to tour the prison buildings but for the moment will not be allowed overnight stays.
Visitors will be able to tour the former jail in the main area of Puerto Balleto, where there is a lighthouse, a bit of infrastructure and a few residents, but as of now, there are no plans to allow overnight stays. The most likely departure points for tours will be San Blas, Nayarit; Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco; and Mazatlán, Sinaloa. The boat trip will take four to six hours depending on the vessel.
Savory and sweet, filling but light, this peanut noodle salad is great for lunch or dinner.
In some parts of Mexico, summer is over; the weather has cooled. You’ve taken out your warm clothes, your layers of socks and slippers, sweatshirts and jeans. You’re thinking about cooked comfort food: stews, soups, things from the oven.
That’s not the case where I am, on the Pacific coast, or on the other side of the country, in the Yucatán. We’re still in the throes — deep in the throes! — of summer heat and rains, wondering when, oh when, it will ever end.
It can be challenging to stay out of the kitchen and still feel well-fed without going out to eat. (Sadly, that’s not practical for every meal, at least for me.) I’ve learned the hard way that “throwing things together” usually won’t make a satisfying, filling meal and that taking a little time to plan and prep in the relative cool of the morning will yield rewards later.
As always, use the best-quality ingredients you can: extra-virgin olive oil, juicy ripe fruit, fresh lime or lemon juice.
Jalapeños, pineapple and cilantro transform this classic watermelon salad to give it a south-of-the-border flair.
Spicy Watermelon-Pineapple Salad
3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. fresh lime zest
2 Tbsp. lime juice
1 Tbsp. honey
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced
Salt and pepper
¼ cup finely chopped red onion
1¼ lbs. fresh watermelon, chilled
1¼ lbs. fresh pineapple, chilled
4 oz. feta, crumbled (about 2/3 cup)
1 packed cup small cilantro sprigs or 1/3 packed cup torn fresh mint
In a large bowl, stir together oil, vinegar, lime zest and juice, honey and jalapeño. Season with salt and pepper. Add onion; toss to coat. Let marinate 10 minutes.
Chop watermelon and pineapple into 1-inch cubes, discarding any seeds. Add to the vinaigrette; toss to coat. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary.
Refrigerate until serving. When ready to serve, add feta and herbs to salad and toss. Serve immediately.
Avocado Salad with Herbs and Capers
Serve either as a side dish/appetizer with roasted or grilled meats, chicken or fish, or make it part of a light lunch, with crusty bread and tangy cheese.
1 large bunch cilantro
1 large bunch parsley
2 scallions, finely chopped
1 jalapeño, seeded, minced
1-2 garlic cloves, grated or minced
½ tsp. fine sea salt, more to taste
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, more to taste
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil, more for serving
4 ripe avocados, peeled, pitted, sliced
4 tsp. capers, drained
Flaky sea salt and black pepper
Everyone will love this refreshing avocado, caper and fresh herb salad.
Reserve a cup of whole cilantro leaves; finely chop remaining leaves and tender stems. Transfer chopped leaves to medium bowl. Do the same with the parsley: Reserve a cup of leaves; finely chop remainder of leaves and tender stems.
Transfer chopped parsley to bowl with cilantro. Add scallions, jalapeño, garlic, fine salt and vinegar. Stir in oil. Taste and add more salt or vinegar if needed.
Scatter the whole cilantro and parsley leaves over 4 salad plates. Fan avocados out on top; sprinkle lightly with fine salt.
Spoon herb dressing over avocado, making sure to include the oil in the bowl; top with capers. Sprinkle with flaky sea salt and black pepper and serve.
Spicy Peanut Noodle Salad with Cucumbers, Red Peppers & Basil
8 oz. Asian wheat noodles or ¼ lb. dry uncooked linguini, capellini or fettucine
½ cup chunky peanut butter
3 Tbsp. soy sauce
3 Tbsp. hot chile sauce (such as Sriracha) or to taste
2 Tbsp. fresh lime juice or rice wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. toasted sesame seed oil
1 large clove garlic, minced or grated
1 Tbsp. sugar or honey
3 Tbsp. warm water
2 large red, orange or yellow bell peppers, sliced into thin strips
1 cucumber, seeds removed, sliced into small half moons
1 cup mung bean sprouts
1 cup loosely packed fresh basil, mint or cilantro
8 scallions, finely sliced at a severe bias to create long, thin strips
2 jalapeños, seeds and ribs removed, sliced into fine strips
½ cup roughly crushed roasted peanuts
Optional: 1-2 red Thai bird chiles or serrano peppers, minced
Cook noodles according to package directions, until tender but still firm. Drain and transfer to bowl of ice water. Agitate noodles until thoroughly chilled; leave in water and set aside.
In large bowl, combine peanut butter, soy sauce, hot sauce, lime juice, sesame oil, garlic, sugar/honey and water. Whisk until combined. Drain noodles thoroughly; add to bowl. Add bell peppers, cucumber, bean sprouts, basil/mint/cilantro, scallions, jalapeños and hot chiles, if using.
Toss well. Serve immediately, topped with roasted peanuts.
Asparagus and Chicken (or Shrimp) Salad with Ginger Dressing
For the dressing:
2 Tbsp. minced shallot
3 Tbsp. rice wine vinegar
2 Tbsp. dark brown sugar or grated piloncillo
1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
Salt to taste
Generous pinch of cayenne
1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp. sesame oil
¼ cup vegetable oil
A sweet and spicy Asian-inspired vinaigrette dresses this full-meal salad.
For the salad:
1 lb. asparagus
Salt and pepper
½ cup roasted peanuts, crushed
¾ lb. cooked chicken or cooked shrimp
2-3 limes, halved
Fresh basil, mint and cilantro leaves, about ½ cup total
Optional: 1 serrano or jalapeño pepper, thinly sliced
To make the vinaigrette, put shallots, vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt and cayenne in small bowl; let sit 5 minutes. Add ginger and garlic, whisk in sesame and vegetable oils. Taste; adjust seasoning.
Break off tough end of asparagus spears, then cut into 2-inch lengths. Cook in boiling water 1 minute. Drain and cool under running water. Blot dry.
To make salad, put asparagus in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add chile, if using, and crushed peanuts. Dress with half the vinaigrette; toss to coat.
Arrange dressed asparagus on platter or individual plates. Tear chicken into strips; scatter over asparagus. (Alternatively, distribute shrimp over salad.) Drizzle with a little more vinaigrette and a good squeeze of lime. Garnish with basil, mint and cilantro leaves. Serve immediately.
Children's native language acquisition begins with a long period of listening and observing their parents' speak. Second language learners can profit from their example. PeopleImages/IStock
The first year I was in Mexico, I took Spanish classes at the School for Foreign Students at the Universidad Veracruzana. My classmates were mostly college students like me, and they came from all over the world.
The European students always made me feel a little bit jealous. As I struggled through verb conjugations and new vocabulary, they’d say things like, “Oh, I just keep getting Spanish confused with Italian!”
When it comes to those of us from (north-er) North America, we’ve really only got the one language, unless you happen to be French Canadian. And when your native language is the lingua franca of the day, it means that not much effort is made to take advantage of kids’ spongey brains language-wise. What for, we think? You already speak the language that everyone else in the world must adapt to.
This means, of course, that most of us learn second languages as adults, when it’s decidedly harder. Learning a language as a child happens naturally, and as long as we are around the language and are forced to use it, we’ll learn it.
So unlike, say, the Danish, who learn English and perhaps a few other languages as children, we English speakers are both privileged in that most people attempt to speak our language and at a disadvantage because for the most part, we get to adulthood not knowing how to learn another language; the experience simply hasn’t been necessary.
Even so, we all know the joke: “What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.”
While this is fair, I can’t help but feel a little offended. I mean, all emotions aside, we’ve got one giant ocean on one side of us, one giant ocean on the other side of us, and a world full of people who already speak our language. What do you expect?
If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re interested in either learning Spanish or continuing to learn Spanish. Maybe you’re already fluent! (If that’s the case, feel free to add on in the comments to what I’ve written.)
As someone who went through the humiliating yet very rewarding experience of learning Spanish as an adult, I’ve got some general tips. Read on if you need some encouragement!
Just listen for a while. Think about how we all learn our first languages: we don’t even attempt to start saying anything coherent until we’re at least a year old, and I personally know plenty of four-year-olds that can still only barely be understood. So give yourself a break, and remember that it’s okay to just sit there and absorb the sounds around you without worrying about what they mean. Try to do so as often as possible. Pay attention to the sounds people make when they’re speaking, the tone of their voices in certain situations, the cadence of their speech. It’s also a nice way to calm down your anxiety about not understanding: “It’s alright, I’m just a baby.”
Listen to music and watch TV and movies in Spanish. This is an even more stress-free way to simply listen, as there’s no expectation that you’ll need to answer the other people. Keeping subtitles on might help as well. There are plenty of phrases, words, and common exclamations that I know today because I read English subtitles while they were said on TV and thought, “Oh, so that’s how you say that!” It’s also a great way to get yourself out of the habit of trying to translate something from English, because it widens your repertoire naturally, introducing aspects of the language without first passing through your native language filter.
Now that I’m on my third tip, it occurs to me that most of these are still about listening. No matter! Again, so much of learning is simply paying attention. What do people say when they greet each other and when they leave? What do they say when they want to get someone’s attention? What do they say when they’re surprised, and what are the filler words and phrases they say without thinking (”ahorita,” anyone?)? Learning these will get you far on your quest of speaking like a native.
Don’t get too hung up about your accent. We all have accents; even “native speakers” have regional accents. I won’t lie: the English-speaker’s accent in Spanish is not very sexy. It’s not like a French accent in English or even a German accent in English. But you know what? That’s okay. And the more you listen to others, the more you’ll be able to imitate them. Learning to roll your r’s, for example, is a big step and really does come with practice.
Some further tips on pronunciation: remember that all the letters in Spanish are pronounced (for the most part) individually and that they are pronounced the same way every time, in every word. So an “o” will always sound the same, as will a “g”, as will a “u”… you get the idea. In English we’re able to be a bit lazy with our vowels in that we let our mouths keep moving once we’ve started saying them (think about how we say the letter “a” for example: “aee.”) In Spanish, the vowels don’t move around as the milliseconds go by, and making sure you don’t let them will do wonders for your accent. Nail the vowels – they are all sounds we also have in English – and you’re golden. Consonants are mostly the same, though the “d” is a bit more forceful in Spanish – almost halfway to a “th” sound — and the “b” and “v” are pronounced so similarly (each one about halfway between the two) that even when Mexicans spell out a word aloud for someone else, they will usually say B-grande to mean “B” or B-chica or V-chica to mean “V” so that the person writing down the word can be sure which they intend. (There is some conflict among Mexicans about which to use. Some will insist that the chica version is said with a “B” and others say it’s with a “V,” but they both sound the same when said aloud, so…)
So remember, be like a baby: listen closely and don’t stress. And even if your Spanish remains subpar for life – hey, not everyone’s got a knack for languages – remember that at least in Mexico, you’re surrounded by tolerant and friendly people who will do their best to communicate.
Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com
