No people or vehicles were nearby when the girder fell on Sunday, officials said.
A huge girder collapsed from a bridge under construction in Querétaro city on Sunday, just hours after it was fixed in place.
No injuries have been reported after the support beam crashed onto the tarmac near the city center on Bernardo Quintana Boulevard, near the intersection with Sombrerete Avenue.
Traffic on Bernardo Quintana Boulevard was temporarily rerouted in one direction.
The curved metallic structure is some 50 meters long and formed part of a vehicular bridge which is about 10 meters above the boulevard’s surface. The infrastructure project cost more than 118 million pesos (US $5.9 million).
The state government said that no people or vehicles were in the vicinity of the bridge at the time of the collapse, meaning that no injuries were recorded. It later said in a statement that an investigation had been opened to determine who was responsible.
The Querétaro Ministry of Urban Development and Public Works said the girder was placed by workers from the construction company Soluntitec. The ministry added in a statement that Soluntitec “was contracted by the state government based on the law and procedures in force.”
The gaffe is particularly embarrassing for state Governor Mauricio Kuri González, who had toured the construction and celebrated its progress on Saturday. “We are very happy because we are putting the last girder here on the Sombrerete bridge … we are very grateful to the people who have shown a lot of patience and a lot of tolerance … this is the way to take Querétaro to the next level,” Kuri said on Saturday, after touring the construction.
Kuri said at the time that the construction was at 60% completion, far ahead of the 37% completion scheduled. He added on Saturday that the bridge was set to be finished in early October, earlier than January 2023 as had been originally planned.
Industries have to meet certain environmental standards to qualify for the Marine Stewardship Council blue label certification. MSC
A prominent Mexican conservationist has highlighted the importance of sustainable fishing to the ongoing survival of the vaquita marina, a critically endangered porpoise that is endemic to the upper Gulf of California.
Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, director of the VaquitaCPR (Conservation, Protection and Recovery) Project, told the newspaper Zeta Tijuana that the Marine Stewardship Council’s blue label needs to be promoted in Mexico as part of measures to protect the vaquita, of which as few as nine are believed to remain.
“The blue MSC label is only applied to wild fish or seafood from fisheries that have been certified to the MSC Fisheries Standard, a set of requirements for sustainable fishing,” Marine Stewardship Council says on its website.
“… Sustainable seafood comes from fisheries that catch fish in ways that ensure the long-term health of a stock or species and the well-being of the ocean.”
This dead vaquita was recovered from the Gulf of California in 2018.
Rojas-Bracho noted that vaquitas become entangled and die in gillnets used to catch both totoaba — a fish prized in China for its swim bladder — and shrimp.
If businesses such as supermarkets and restaurants only bought and sold blue label seafood, fishermen who want to sell their catch here would presumably be dissuaded from using such nets. Gillnets — which also entangle marine species such as sea turtles and small sharks — are already banned in the upper Gulf of California, but enforcement has been lax.
Rojas-Bracho observed that the “blue market” for sustainable seafood is already well developed in the United States and Europe. But the same can’t be said about Mexico.
However, the conservationist believes there is an opportunity to develop a sustainable seafood market that is a source of national pride. According to the Marine Stewardship Council, four Mexican fisheries are already MSC certified: a red lobster fishery, two small open sea fisheries and a tuna fishery.
“The Mexican market is … increasingly interested in sustainable seafood products,” the non-profit organization says on its website.
“In collaboration with the Mexican campaign PescaConFuturo, the MSC has highlighted the importance of maintaining healthy fish stocks to guarantee food and economic security for future generations and to safeguard the natural wealth of the Mexican waters.”
Flooding damaged federal highway 15 in several areas, and took out part of El Valiente bridge. Twitter @carlosaguelle7
Sonora was devastated by heavy flooding on the weekend, leaving at least one youth dead, thousands of homes flooded, cutting off remote communities and destroying highways.
The chaos followed heavy rains which arrived on Friday and continued through Sunday.
A father witnessed his 17-year-old son drown in a river by the Nacapule Canyon in Guaymas, while thousands of families were flooded and some cut off in rural areas of Guaymas and Empalme.
At least 600 people were evacuated from a community in the former municipality before nearby rivers burst their banks.
Implementa Protección Civil Sonora intenso operativo de rescate en comunidades rurales de Guaymas y Empalme -Se estima que podrían ser evacuadas de zonas de riesgo hasta 600 personas de varias comisarías afectadas por las recientes lluviashttps://t.co/YnJWne1metpic.twitter.com/3lI9hg43dU
Hundreds of people had to evacuate after intense flooding hit rural areas of Guaymas and Empalme, as seen in photos shared by state Civil Protection.
Governor Alfonso Durazo said four adults and two girls were rescued after getting trapped in a car trying to cross a river in Empalme.
The navy reported rescuing three people in the El Ojaí ranch and one elderly person in La Atravesada. The ministry said another person who ignored warnings was rescued after trying to drive through a river in Nacozari.
Lasting damage was also done to road infrastructure. The “El Valiente” vehicular bridge at kilometer 138 of the Hermosillo-Guaymas highway collapsed on Sunday.
A section of the Obregón-Empalme highway was also closed, at kilometer 108. At least one side of the Hermosillo-Puerto Libertad highway was also put out of use and parts of the Nogales-Mexico City highway were disabled by the rainfall.
🔴 ¡El puente Buenavista del libramiento Obregón-Guaymas dañado por el agua!
Se reportó una peligrosa erosión en el puente, cerca de la caseta de pago. Se deben extremar precauciones
The Buenavista bridge on a federal highway 15 bypass near Guaymas was also damaged.
However, there has been at least one beneficiary of the rainfall in the northwest of the country. The Cusárare waterfall in Guachochi, Chihuahua, was filmed flowing majestically on Wednesday after more than two years of drought.
The waterfall, which became a sad spectacle of two small streams trickling down, has now returned to its full force with water crashing down its 30-meter descent.
More heavy rain was forecast for Sonora on Monday and very heavy rain was forecast for Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango.
Gabriela Elena Suárez attempted to enter and exit Ensenada's beaches via different beachfront hotels but says she was rebuffed and eventually arrested for it. Hotel Coral and Marina/Facebook
A woman in Baja California was arrested Friday for trying to leave a beach in Ensenada through a hotel despite the fact that the federal constitutional guarantees Mexicans free transit to and from all beaches in Mexico.
Activist Gabriela Elena Suárez Macías tried to enter and exit the beaches of Ensenada via two different hotel properties with her seven-year-old niece but was prevented from doing so, questioned and later arrested.
Suárez is part of the group Conspiracioncitas de Ensenada (Ensenada’s little conspiracies), which is dedicated to the protection of beaches in the city. Environmental groups have consistently complained about the lack of public entrances to beaches in Ensenada, most of which are obstructed by hotels or restaurants.
The Mexican constitution makes all beaches in Mexico public, which means that landowners of beach properties such as hotels and restaurants may not block citizens’ access to any beach without providing some alternative access route.
Suárez belongs to one of various activist groups in Ensenada that advocate for cleaner and more publicly accessible beaches here. Somoselmedio
A 2020 federal law additionally established sanctions of up to 1 million pesos or the revocation of property ownership for those who prohibit access.
Suárez said she and her niece first tried to enter the beach via the Hotel Coral and Marina but were rebuffed by employees, who cited security concerns.
“The hotel security guards told us that we couldn’t enter. We tried to explain that [the hotel] should have a worker’s route [to provide access], but they told us that it couldn’t be done and that they were going to call the police,” Suárez said, according to the newspaper La Jornada.
According to the newspaper El Imparcial, Suárez added that she opted for a diplomatic solution since she “didn’t want to ruin the day.” She walked 20 minutes to get to the beach via another route, she said, “where we spent three hours swimming.”
Oceanfront cabins line the beach at the Hotel Quintas Papagayo, which allegedly had Suárez arrested. Hotel Quintas Papagayo website
However, when leaving the beach, Suárez tried to leave by walking through the Hotel Quintas Papagayo. A hotel worker there stopped her to ask if she was a hotel guest, Suárez said. He explained that if she wasn’t, she couldn’t pass through the hotel.
“I asked him about the alternative path, and he told me that there wasn’t one,” Suárez said, according to El Imparcial. “I replied that he was obliged to let me pass through to the nearest public road, which in this case is the highway. He became very arrogant and said that he couldn’t … We were just three steps from the highway. They just had to open the door to let us out.”
Suárez and her niece were instructed to leave the beach from where they had entered, according to El Imparcial, which would have meant another 20-minute walk that would have been strenuous for her “tired and wet” niece, Suárez said. She added that they were within their rights because beaches are the property of all Mexicans, according to the General Law of National Property.
Personnel at the Hotel Quintas Papagayo called the police, and according to La Jornada, eight officers arrived, ignoring her legal explanation, and handcuffed her, telling her that her detention was for “being ridiculous.”
Suárez was taken to the police station but later released without charges. She said she made a complaint to the Environment Ministry and that she would lodge a complaint with the Human Rights Commission for excessive use of force.
“The easiest way for hotels to avoid this problem is to make an alternative path where locals and people who are not staying [at the hotel] can go to the beach,” Suárez said.
The attack occurred in Laguna del Carpintero, in the city of Tampico. Screenshot
A Tamaulipas man was killed by a crocodile last week and a video of the enormous reptile parading his body around the lake has gone viral.
The man entered Laguna del Carpintero (“Carpenter’s Lake”) in south Tampico around 8:30 a.m. Thursday according to witnesses, unaware that a three-meter crocodile was swimming nearby.
The unidentified man’s body was recovered near Volantín and the crocodile was captured.
Emergency services personnel had to break through a drain to recover the body. The lake is located in a park complex that is undergoing renovation.
In the video, three people can be seen calmly filming with their cellphones from the side of the lake. The crocodile is seen dragging the motionless man around the lake, biting his shoulder and neck. The man is face down, semi-nude and unconscious and the crocodile is swimming close to the edge of the lake, as if to present his catch to the people filming.
Crocodile attacks are a real danger in Tamaulipas. At Laguna del Carpintero alone three people have been killed in the last three years and in June, 2021, a video went viral of a woman washing her clothes in the lake, only for a crocodile to grab her by the leg and drag her towards the water.
In La Agua lake in Altamira an eight-year-old girl was attacked by a crocodile earlier this month, before her father, who was fishing nearby, managed to fight it off. The girl survived with forearm, shoulder and back injuries and was treated at a hospital in Tampico. Attacks have also been recorded in Ciudad Madero.
However, despite crocodile attacks and sightings being recorded in almost all lakes in southern Tamaulipas this year, an inspector with the federal environmental protection agency Profepa, Matías Fernández Torres, said there is no plan to relocate the crocodiles.
There is no plan to relocate crocodiles because they are important for the health of the food chain health, a Tamaulipas official said.
Fernández said that Profepa couldn’t interfere with the habitat of the crocodiles, in any way that would break their mating habits and reproductive cycles. “It’s their habitat. We as an authority try to defend and protect the ecosystem that we have in this body of water [Laguna del Carpintero], for all the species that live there … it would disrupt their food chain … we can’t interact with nature in a damaging way. What we do as an ombudsman is protect the biodiversity of [the lake’s] species,” he said.
Meanwhile, a family in Ciudad Madero has found a novel solution to the dangers of crocodiles: they made friends with one. For 10 years the crocodile has responded to “Coco,” both an abbreviation for the Spanish word for crocodile, as well as the Spanish word for coconut.
The reptile emerges from the lake for its supper every evening when called, which is provided by the family’s mother, Lidia Loredo Gómez.
Loredo offers it chicken, leftovers or whatever else can be found in the fridge.
When Civil Protection officers previously tried to take Coco away due to the risks it posed to the local population, local people objected and the crocodile stayed.
Loredo, for one, can’t imagine a life without Coco: “He’s part of my family,” she said.
A shortage of cancer medications has impacted patients at this hospital in Colima.
Chemotherapy has been canceled at at least one public hospital in Colima due to a lack of cancer medications.
Cancer patient Perla Villa said Saturday that her chemotherapy appointment at the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) General Hospital No. 1 in the municipality of Villa de Álvarez was canceled and that it was unclear when her treatment would resume.
“I have an appointment for tomorrow but sadly they called me this morning to tell me it would be canceled,” she said in a video posted to her Facebook account. “Why? Because there are no chemotherapy drugs. … There are now definitely none … and they don’t know when there will be [more],” Villa said.
In a video filmed at the IMSS hospital, she said she had filed a complaint on her behalf and that of other patients in the same situation.
“It’s sad that they’re canceling our treatment and they’re telling me here that I’m not the only one who has made a complaint. Several people have come to make a complaint due to the same situation – the lack of medications,” Villa said.
“I please ask you to share this video so that it goes viral and we can receive our treatment as we deserve,” she said.
As of Monday afternoon, the video had been shared about 5,000 times and attracted over 600 comments.
“It’s not fair,” Villa said. “The government needs to get its act together so that there is medicine. I don’t know where the chain is broken … [but the cancer drugs] are not arriving where they should arrive, which is to each of us patients.”
A day before Villa posted her video, Twitter user Yadira Rocha said that her grandmother had been unable to access chemotherapy at the same hospital due to a shortage of paclitaxel, a medication used to treat a range of cancers.
The news website Publimetro reported that cancer patients in Colima have been complaining about drug shortages since July. IMSS hasn’t publicly addressed the issue.
For its part, state-owned medical company Birmex has acknowledged difficulties fulfilling the tasks the current federal government allocated to it: the purchasing and distribution of medications. Birmex said in a report that due to the “level of complexity” and a lack of resources it hasn’t concluded a project to develop a new national distribution system.
However, the state-owned company isn’t directly responsible for the lack of medications at the hospital in Villa de Álvarez as it was disqualified from an IMSS tendering process to find a distributor after it was deemed incapable of meeting the public health care provider’s needs.
Undercover National Guard agents used skills from their time as Federal Police officers to infiltrate corrupt municipal police forces.
An elite group of former Federal Police (PF) officers has infiltrated municipal police forces in Guanajuato to detect and clean out corrupt cops with links to narcos, according to state authorities.
About 150 “criminals in uniforms” — municipal police officers with links to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel — have so far been dismissed as a result of the elite group’s work, said Sophia Huett, executive secretary of the Guanajuato public security system.
According to a Milenio newspaper report, the state government requested federal approval to create the elite group in order to break the control exerted by the corrupt cops in Guanajuato, which has been Mexico’s most violent state in recent years. Formed just over a year ago, it is made up of some 30 former PF officers who previously attended training courses offered by the FBI and DEA in the United States, the National Police of Colombia and anti-gang authorities in El Salvador.
The mission of the ex-federal cops — now members of the National Guard, which superseded the PF — is to purge municipal forces of criminal cops and help reduce violence to a point where Guanajuato is no longer the country’s most murderous entity. Members of the elite force who spoke with Milenio said that corrupt municipal police provide information to organized crime groups and thwart operations against them, among other collusive conduct.
Sophia Huett, chief of the Guanajuato public security system.
One former PF member said that several municipal police in Celaya — the first municipality where a force was infiltrated — were “uniformed criminals.”
He said that some of the corrupt cops were caught committing illegal acts and turned over to the relevant authorities.
In addition to corruption in police forces in Celaya and nearby municipalities such as Apaseo el Grande and Apaseo el Alto, the elite group has also detected that local cops lack training and equipment. An ex-federal cop said that municipal forces were practically laughing stocks.
“A municipal colleague said, ‘I joined out of necessity, to have a job, we were novices in police matters, they gave us a baton and that was our work tool,’” he said. “… Now we have to work intelligently because we’re talking about organized crime,” he added.
Jesús Ignacio Rivera Peralta, Celaya’s police chief, said over 200 officers have been fired since he took the job late last year.
Jesús Ignacio Rivera Peralta, a 26-year veteran of the PF who now heads up the Celaya police force and has collaborated closely with the elite group, said that some crimes have declined since the ex-PF cops arrived.
“It was said last year that Celaya was the most dangerous city in Mexico and statistically the city where the highest number of municipal police were killed due to crime; today we’re no longer in those positions,” he said.
Rivera, who became police chief late last year, told Milenio that over 200 municipal police in Celaya have been dismissed for a range of reasons, allowing him to have greater control over the force. However, he didn’t specify how many were fired as a result of the elite group’s detection of corrupt conduct.
Huett, the state security official, said that members of the elite group were formerly deployed on special operations in notoriously violent states such as Guerrero, Michoacán, Tamaulipas and Chihuahua. During their deployments, the then-Federal Police officers learned that they couldn’t guarantee security if state and municipal cops weren’t doing their job, she said.
The elite group now working in Guanajuato “generates information that allows … the actions of criminal groups to be detected,” she explained.
“And when you follow the lines of investigation, they take you to more criminals or criminals that were in police forces at some stage or worse still, active [police force] members,” Huett said. “The principal objective of this group is to uncover criminals, wherever they may be.”
It’s not enough to just dismiss criminal cops, the security official added, asserting that officers who “betrayed a commitment or rather disguised themselves as police” should go to jail. “… He who betrays the vocation [must] pay the consequences,” Huett said.
Jesús Murillo Karam was arrested Saturday and remains in preventative custody. He was Mexico's attorney general from 2012–2015. File photo
Former attorney general Jesús Murillo Karam is behind bars after he was arrested Friday in connection with the disappearance and presumed murder of 43 students in Guerrero in 2014.
The federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) said that Murillo – attorney general between 2012 and 2015 in the government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto – was detained “without resistance” at his Mexico City home on charges of forced disappearance, torture and obstruction of justice in connection with the abduction of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College students, who disappeared in Iguala on September 26, 2014.
A judge on Saturday remanded the ex-official in preventative custody at the Reclusorio Norte prison in Mexico City after the FGR sought that measure because it considers the suspect a flight risk. Murillo will face another hearing on Wednesday.
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas at a press conference Friday announcing the government’s latest findings. Alejandro Encinas/Twitter
Deputy Interior Minister Alejandro Encinas said Friday that the students were victims of forced disappearance by government authorities and criminal groups. Senior officials in the Peña Nieto government altered crime scenes and concealed links between authorities and criminals in what amounted to a coverup, he said.
Murillo, also a former federal lawmaker and governor of Hidalgo, is considered the key architect of the so-called “historic truth” in the Ayotzinapa case – that the students, traveling on a bus they commandeered to go to a protest in Mexico City, were intercepted by corrupt municipal police who handed them over to members of the Guerreros Unidos crime gang. The Guerreros Unidos — mistaking them for rival gangsters — killed them, burned their bodies in a dump in the municipality of Cocula, Guerrero, and disposed of their remains in a nearby river, according to the previous government’s official version of events.
The former attorney general told a press conference in January 2015 that that version of events was “a legal certainty.”
However, the “historic truth” has been widely criticized and questioned both within Mexico and internationally. Prosecutors alleged at a hearing on Saturday that Murillo used false evidence to construct the official version of events.
Families of the 43 students who disappeared in 2014, as well as many other Mexicans, were not satisfied with the previous government’s “historical truth” about what happened. File photo
The United Nations said in a 2018 report that 34 people were tortured in connection with the investigation, while prosecutors alleged Saturday that Murillo committed acts of torture against six people in order to obtain false confessions.
Many people have long suspected that the army played a role in the kidnapping and apparent murder of the students, a belief supported by leaked testimony from a suspected Guerreros Unidos leader.
The FGR said in a statement Friday that a México state-based federal judge had issued a total of 83 arrest warrants against 20 military commanders and soldiers belonging to two battalions in Iguala, five administrative and judicial officials in Guerrero, 33 municipal police officers from Huitzuco, Iguala and Cocula, 11 state police and 14 members of the Guerreros Unidos gang.
All are “linked to what occurred in the city of Iguala, Guerrero, on September 26 and 27 of 2014 and later dates,” the FGR said, adding that they are accused of organized crime, forced disappearance, torture, homicide and crimes against the administration of justice.
The dump in Cocula, Guerrero, where the previous government’s version of events claimed some of the 43 students’ bodies were burned by crime gang members. Screen capture
During the hearing on Saturday, Murillo said he would present evidence during his next court appearance that clearly shows what happened to the 43 normalistas, or teaching students, in September 2014. His lawyer, Javier López García, said the evidence consisted of documents and photographs.
A doctor who has treated Murillo for almost three decades told the same hearing that the 74-year-old has serious health problems. Advising against his patient’s incarceration, Alberto Jonguitud Falcón said that Murillo has high blood pressure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among other problems.
In addition to the former attorney general, authorities believe that 32 other former officials were involved in the fabrication of the “historic truth.”
Among them are Tomás Zerón, former head of the now-defunct Criminal Investigation Agency, and Mexico City police chief Omar García Harfuch, a former Federal Police coordinator in Guerrero. The latter on Monday said that he rejected the “absurd” claim that he had participated in a meeting to “conceive the historic truth.”
Mexico City Police Chief Omar García Harfuch, seen here as a Guerrero coordinator for the now-defunct Federal Police, was named by authorities as a possible conspirator. File photo
“Hopefully, those conducting the investigations detain those who did damage to the young men instead of ruining lives and reputations of those of us who do something for our country every day,” García wrote on Twitter.
President López Obrador said Monday that his government’s Ayotzinapa truth commission had not requested that Peña Nieto and former army chief Salvador Cienfuegos be investigated in connection with the students’ disappearance. He told his morning news conference that many people shared “joint responsibility” for the crime, “but those who participated directly are those who are being tried.”
AMLO and Baja California Governor Marina del Pilar at Friday's conference in Tijuana.
Bullets flew, highways were blocked and convenience stores burned on a busy weekend for cartel members. Meanwhile, President López Obrador was in Nuevo León, attending to the water crisis. Attention is required: in Monterrey water has only been running for 6 hours/day since early June.
Monday
“They want us to do badly. They are very desperate and nervous, making propaganda. They use the weekends to manipulate and to distort things … it’s very sensationalist, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear … it was one of the weekends, incredibly, with the fewest homicides. But due to propaganda, the perception is different,” the president assured, after the press focused on cartel chaos on the weekend.
López Obrador said there had only been a relatively modest 196 murders over the weekend and lamented that the 10 trapped miners in Sabinas, Coahuila, on day 12 below ground, had still not been seen, after a rescue attempt was hampered by further flooding.
To ensure their own safety, a journalist had suggested that Mexicans take up arms: the president saw the funny side, allowing himself a chuckle. “Without doubt our adversaries are exaggerating …. There is nothing to fear, we are working and taking care of the people … we must stop dirty propaganda and slander campaigns,” he insisted, and compared the government’s record to the similarly gory security records of his predecessors.
Tuesday
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell revealed that after five consecutive weeks of waning COVID-19 cases, the whole country was green on the coronavirus stoplight risk map. However, yellow might be a more appropriate color for a map of Mexico at present amid a fearsome drought.
Fortunately, the environment was a priority for the president, who said his most important act as leader was withholding mining concessions. López Obrador alleged political collusion with mining magnates in Coahuila, the state where a mine collapsed earlier this month. “The owner of the main mining plant in that region [Coahuila] has … 10 or 20 luxury planes. He lent them to the governor of Coahuila … those same [mining] chiefdoms have objected to mine workers protecting themselves and unionizing, they’ve threaten them,” he insisted.
However, despite obstructions, adversaries and “vultures,” who the president said were trying to gain a political advantage from the mining disaster, heremained confident that Mexico was headed in the right direction. “We are starting the fourth transformation of public life, which is a moral economy. Giving preference to the poor, creating jobs, seeking self-sufficiency, recovering the role of public institutions, rescuing Pemex, the Federal Electricity Commission, education, healthcare. That’s what we’re doing and that’s what we’ll continue to do,” he said.
Wednesday
Fake news connoisseur Elizabeth García Vilchis sorted the rotten from the ripe on Wednesday. “The media assure they tell the truest of truths,” García chided, before saying that conservatives were up in arms that another teacher, Leticia Ramírez, had taken over as Education Minister. She then accused a journalist of being a “racist, conservative and neoliberal,” due to an incorrect report on airline routes.
Elizabeth García described one journalist as ‘racist, conservative and neoliberal’ for a report she called incorrect during her weekly media lies session.
García added there had been a “mega campaign to generate a perception of generalized violence and lack of governance,” on the weekend, and paused to provide a long list of journalists and media organizations which took part in the alleged collusion.
Later in the conference, the president backed Ramírez as education minister. “Level of schooling, of education, is not synonymous with levels of culture … she’s an exceptional woman,” he said in a retort to critics of Ramírez, before giving the new minister a welcoming hug and kiss on stage.
As for the president, he was already looking forward to being replaced, and winding down. “Here in the city you walk faster. The countryside is quieter, more relaxed … when I finish, I’m going to retire,” he said. “I’m going to the countryside, to sea level. Living at sea level is better for hypertensive people than living at altitude,” the 68-year-old leader informed.
Thursday
López Obrador lamented the murder of the mayor’s son in Celaya, Guanajuato, – a notoriously violent city – before Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejía delivered his “Zero Impunity” section on crime. Mejía said 42 people had been arrested after violence in Baja California, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Guanajuato and Chihuahua. In Michoacán alone, a further 167 people had been put behind bars, Mejía confirmed.
To denounce a different class of criminal, a little seen minister took center stage. A food program appeared to be rotten at the core: Minister of public administration, Roberto Salcedo Aquino, reported on AMLO-era corruption allegations into an Agriculture Ministry program. Since 2019, Salcedo said, 38 criminal complaints had been made due to irregularities at Mexican Food Security (Segalmex).
However, it wasn’t only theft, but favoritism that the president was keen to combat. He highlighted that almost all finance ministers had studied at the same university and pondered how many judges had been privately educated. Despite his concerns, the president later insisted he would keep his distance from the courts: “that is a decision for the judiciary. There are things that don’t seem right to me, but we have to respect the decision,” López Obrador said, after the Tamaulipas governor escaped arrest on money laundering and criminal association charges, due to his immunity from prosecution.
Friday
The president delivered the conference on Friday from Mexico’s northwestern extremity, Tijuana, Baja California.
It was sorry reading in the state’s security briefing by Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval. He said the border state was second for murders, second for kidnapping and first for vehicle theft.
On the national front Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez provided some respite for the president. Icela said crimes were down 29.3% in July compared to when the administration began and that homicide was down 12.8% since the historic maximum in 2018.
The miners in Sabinas, however, appeared to be in grave trouble. The head of Civil Protection, Laura Velázquez, mentioned a geophysical report of the mine and the use of a drone with laser technology, but could offer no word from the 10 men trapped since August 3.
A separate, historic disaster was occupying the president’s mind. Having seen on Thursday the families of the 43 students gone missing from Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, in 2014, he insisted justice would be done. “It’s a very sad thing … painful for parents, but we said from the beginning that we were going to speak with the truth no matter how painful it was. The case is not closed, only the report of the commission was released yesterday. The Attorney General’s Office is going to continue … It will be up to the judges and the Judiciary to deliver justice,” he said, displaying great faith in Mexico’s institutions.
The first issue of Artes de México, left, which focused on Mexico City, and the most current issue, No. 134, right, covering Guerrero's traditional festivals.
I get it. If your Spanish was “all that,” you would be learning about Mexico through local sources.
But what if I told you that there is at least one Mexican publication that makes quality information available in well-translated English?
That would be Artes de México.
In 1988, Alberto Ruy Sánchez and Margarita de Orellana were a young couple looking for a career. The economic crises of the 1980s had not been kind to them. Despite doctorates and foreign work experience, they had to get by with various freelance and other academic gigs.
Margarita de Orellana in Artes de México‘s store in Mexico City.
Then they found “their reason for living.” They were tasked with reviving a publication that had run from 1955 to 1980.
Published quarterly, Artes de México is neither a magazine nor a book but a hybrid. To distinguish it as such, let’s use the Spanish word revista.
Artes de México recruits experts and other noted writers to write interrelated articles within the issue to provide laypeople with an in-depth look at a thematic topic. Issues remain available as reference works years after publication.
The English language has been important to the publication since its relaunch. “Intuitively, we realized that we had a market [for this type of publication] in the United States because of the number of Mexicans living there,” says De Orellana.
But foreign mass distribution there has not worked out. The English today serves to promote Mexican culture globally. But since it is not the organization’s main focus, translations are in the back, meaning you have to flip back and forth to read the English and look at the excellent photographs.
And despite being called “Arts of Mexico,” the publication actually covers a wide range of cultural topics, walking a middle road between pop culture and the academic. Issues have been dedicated to biodiversity, festivals, holidays, food, clothing, cultural symbols, indigenous cultures, history and, of course, the various arts. It presents information not readily available in other media.
One early issue, for example, focused on legendary cameraman Gabriel Figueroa, who worked on over 200 films during Mexico’s golden age of cinema. He was all but forgotten by the late 1980s. It is fair to say that that issue’s publication helped save Figueroa and his work from oblivion.
De Orellana is proud of the work they have done on topics related to Mexico’s indigenous peoples, saying that other media tend to push politics and propaganda, “… often without knowing the roots of the topic.”
From an article on the artisans of Ocumicho, Michoacán. INPI
Octavio Murillo, head archivist for the National Institute for Indigenous Peoples, agrees that the revistas have been important in bringing knowledge about indigenous communities to a wider audience, pointing specifically to issues they did that were related to the Huichol people and pre-Hispanic art.
Certain topic categories have been particularly successful, such as food. There are issues dedicated to the chili pepper, the nopal cactus, tequila, mezcal or pulque. Several have been devoted to chocolate and corn.
The dietary habits of Mesoamerica have been extensively examined. There are also two issues called Seeds of Identity (Semillas de Identidad) highlighting the foods from Mexico that have impacted world cuisine.
Artes de México’s greatest success has been with the country’s handcrafts and folk art, despite some initial resistance by the publication to covering such work. Its first revista on this topic was on Puebla’s Talavera pottery, about which nothing had been published for decades.
De Orellana credits these issues’ popularity to the growing respect that Mexico’s artisans have earned both inside and outside the country.
Gayle Pierce, president of Los Amigos de Arte Popular, the largest Mexican folk art support organization, has supported Artes de México‘s work in this realm for many years. “[It] is a tremendous resource for someone new to the genre or the seasoned collector,” she says.
Artes de México has enjoyed longstanding relationships with education, government and cultural institutions. The revistas are important to both teachers and students, but not just in the humanities; graphic designers study them as well. The publication’s name appears regularly in bibliographies of academic works in both English and Spanish.
However, its future is cloudy.
The onset of commercial internet in the early 1990s has presented Artes de México with the same challenges as other publishers. It now competes with free and nearly unlimited information, with younger generations preferring video. Advertising, the staple of the publication’s original operations, is no longer feasible.
The revista still enjoys support from Mexico’s educated classes. The organization’s ties to traditional cultural and educational institutions mean that the physical publications remain central. But it also means losing touch with many readers under 30. This is a problem that Ruy Sánchez and de Orellana have not yet fully worked out. Artes de Mexico is a nonprofit and has shifted to collaboration with its main supporters in the production of revistas and more traditional books.
They have organized events related to Mexico’s culture, such as a recent forum to discuss a recent ban on rótulos in Mexico City. They have hired a more digitally savvy staff to explore ways to make better use of online tools. On their website, you can read selected articles from various issues, although those are only in Spanish.
But it is more difficult to pay the bills and get the kind of high-quality content still in demand into people’s hands when they are no longer willing to pay 300 pesos or more per issue for four issues per year.
For those of us who still like the idea of a “book” in our hands, there is no indication that Artes de México will abandon physical print anytime soon. Issues of the publication, present and past, are still readily available in many bookstores (including some of Mexico’s biggest bookseller chains), museum shops, book fairs and, of course, from their website.
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.
