The government is offering second boosters to all seniors, people with medical conditions and health workers, but availability varies greatly for anyone else. BCS Health Ministry
As Mexico’s fifth wave of coronavirus infections continues, two health experts have criticized the federal government for its slow and limited rollout of fourth shots of COVID-19 vaccines.
The government has offered second booster shots to seniors, people with existing medical conditions that make them vulnerable to serious illness and health workers, but not all younger adults have had access to a fourth dose.
According to The New York Times vaccinations tracker, 72% of Mexicans (adults and children) are vaccinated and 63% are fully vaccinated, but only 44% have had additional shots. Most of the booster shots administered to date have been third doses.
Francisco Moreno, an infectious disease specialist and head of COVID-19 care at the ABC Hospital in Mexico City, said that Mexico is behind where it should be in terms of fourth-dose coverage.
UNAM epidemiologist Gustavo Oláiz expressed concern that those who have been vaccinated in Mexico are losing their lives to COVID in greater numbers. UNAM
“We’re behind due to a government strategy that gives the impression that the government wants to say: ‘We’re giving you this privilege [to get a fourth shot]’ but it’s not a privilege, it’s a right,” he told the newspaper Reforma.
In emphasizing the need for fourth shots to be administered more quickly and widely, Moreno noted that the emergence of new omicron subvariants has made reinfection more likely. He also said that the spread of the highly contagious substrains increases the risk of serious disease and hospitalizations.
Over time, people begin to lose vaccine-stimulated antibodies against COVID-19, and that puts them at greater risk of serious illness, Moreno said.
Gustavo Oláiz, an epidemiologist and National Autonomous University (UNAM) academic, was also critical of the government for not offering fourth shots more widely.
Fourth doses have been offered to younger adults in some parts of the country, including Mexico City, but they have not been available to that sector of the population across the nation, according to Reforma, which also reported that the government is not currently planning to broaden access to all people aged 18 and over.
Oláiz said that additional shots are needed every six to eight months to ensure people have protection against COVID-19, which has claimed over 328,000 lives in Mexico, according to official data. The omicron subvariants are more aggressive and adept at evading people’s immune systems, he told Reforma.
Oláiz noted that COVID-19 deaths have declined, but stressed that fatalities are still occurring. A lot of those dying are unvaccinated, but people who have had shots are losing their lives to the disease in growing numbers, he said.
“That means that immunity is being lost and we have to replenish it,” Oláiz said.
The federal government said last week that the fifth wave has begun to ease, but Oláiz described the decline as slow. There were just under 113,000 estimated active cases on Sunday, the Health Ministry reported, a 33% decline compared to a week earlier.
Accumulated case numbers – considered a vast undercount due to Mexico’s low testing rate – currently total 6.85 million, with about one-quarter of all infections detected in Mexico City. The Health Ministry said Sunday that 12% of general care hospital beds set aside for coronavirus patients were occupied, while just 4% of those with ventilators were taken.
Neill James' legacy lives on not only in this mural in Ajijic but also in successful Mexican artists who either took art classes she organized or were taught by graduates. Courtesy of Lake Chapala Society
Ajijic is widely noted as one of Mexico’s main art towns. Yes, much of that today is because of the many foreign artists and collectors, but I’ll argue that even more important are locals who have been nurtured in this direction since the mid-20th century.
Ajijic was a relatively unknown place when American Neill James arrived here in 1943. An international travel writer, she had been on several continents during the interwar period.
Her foray into Mexico took a turn for the worse when she broke her leg on one volcano and got nearly buried by the ash from another.
Or as she put it: “I fell on Popocatépetl; Paracutin fell on me.”
James had traveled the world before putting down roots in Ajijic in 1943. She quickly decided that she wanted to get involved and do good for the community.
She was taken to Ajijic to recuperate, where she wrote her most famous book Dust on My Heart — which also signaled the end of her travel writing career. She had found “home.”
Her decision to spend the rest of her life there was not just the great weather, it was also the people. Entrepreneurial herself (necessary since she was not independently wealthy as some stories claim), she got involved in the community to help people help themselves.
Most of these efforts were in education, first with a library and then a program to teach art to local children in 1954. The program was not just about creating art but selling it as well. She partnered with local teacher Angelita Aldana, who taught almost all of the first generations of alumni.
Promising students received scholarships to an art institute in San Miguel de Allende or to the University of Guadalajara.
Saturday art class at the Children’s Art Program. The classes are free to children under 18, who are taught by both Mexican and foreign artist volunteers.
James died in 1994 at nearly 100 years of age, and her program is still going strong at the Lake Chapala Society (LCS), the largest expat organization in Mexico. She did not found the organization, but she did bequeath her house to them, their main facility. Alumni Jesús López Vega and Javier Zaragoza painted a mural honoring her and the children’s art program at the facility, which has over the years trained many local children, many of whom went on to have art careers both in Mexico and the United States.
Some went to have careers in the United States, while others developed their careers in the Chapala area, where their influence is prominent in many local galleries and murals. Their art is no small part of the reason why many foreigners come to live “lakeside” and stay.
One of James’s first success stories was Javier Zaragoza, a 1950s graduate who would go on to have a multi-decade commercial art career in the United States before returning to Ajijic to open a gallery. He says that at that time, the idea of being an artist was far beyond his dreams in a tiny town, no matter how much talent one might have.
Brothers Antonio and Jesús López Vega are 1960s graduates, both fixtures in the town’s mural and gallery scenes. Both mix folkloric Mexican imagery with surrealism, heavily influenced by their grandmother’s stories about the lake and the region. Antonio is the better-known of the two, having had shows in prestigious venues in Mexico City.
1978 Children’s Art Program graduate Efrén González’s mural in Ajijic makes it hard to tell where art stops and reality begins.
However, both remain in Ajijic, creating murals and teaching the next generations of Ajijic’s artists.
The Padilla family also has benefitted from the program, starting with early student Florentino Padilla, a contemporary of Javier Zaragoza. He received a scholarship to San Miguel, then in the 1970s moved to San Francisco, where he painted a mural.
His niece, Lucia Padilla, did not know him well, but seeing him paint one time inspired her. She, too, attended the program and has worked in art on and off since the 1990s, including modeling for painters.
She is the only woman alumni of the program featured on the Lake Chapala Society’s mural. Her 11-year-old daughter, Jennifer, is the next generation and, Mom, of course, fully supports her efforts.
Mural by early successful graduate Javier Zaragoza, who only very recently retired from mural painting. He teaches every Saturday at the Children’s Art Program.
Perhaps Ajijic’s most famous mural was done by 1978 graduate Efrén González. Although he did the allegory on the primary school’s main facade, the main attraction is the rows upon rows of red clay skulls with names. Each of these are lit up on Day of the Dead.
Ever the workaholic, he teaches, runs several art businesses with his sons and this past summer opened the town’s first art museum.
One of the most recent success stories is Luis Enrique Martínez Hernández. Like many artists, he began drawing as a small child, but unlike many, his parents encouraged this, even though they were poor caretakers of a hacienda in San Juan Cosalá, Jalisco. At the Lake Chapala Society, he was mentored by various alumni of the program and went on to exhibit with his work influenced by impressionism and surrealism.
Most of the living Mexican artists in the town are linked to the school, but not all. In 1977, James started the short-lived Young Painters of Ajijic, which allowed alumni and others to exhibit their work on Sunday afternoons on the property. It would be the forerunner of the current Asociación de Artistas de Ajijic/Ajijic Society of the Arts.
Today, newcomers like Goretti Chavira and Orlando Solano Álvarez work to make their name, completely independent of the school.
James never had any biological children. But in a sense, she is still producing young artists, some of which are second- and even third-generation participants. The program is still running strong at the Lake Chapala Society, with 90 registered and with at least 30 attending Saturday classes.
Javier Zaragoza, who has taught as a volunteer here for 20 years, says that only a few stay on and show promise to be artists, but perhaps more importantly, the program shows children that they have value and can do whatever they like if they want it enough.
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.
Did you know that Tijuana gave the world the Caesar salad?
A perfectly made Caesar salad is a thing of discreet beauty and utter deliciousness, a far cry, sadly, from what’s usually served in many restaurants and private homes.
As the saying goes, the devil is in the details, and that’s certainly true in this case. Packaged, artificially flavored croutons; any old kind of lettuce; inferior not-really Parmesan cheese; and, worst of all, bottled dressing do not make a Caesar salad worthy of the name.
It’s a shame, really, because following the almost 100-year-old recipe is actually quite easy.
Start with the best-quality ingredients you can afford, whisk up the dressing and then toss it all in a large bowl with inner, crunchy-white romaine leaves, crispy homemade croutons and shaved Parmesan, and you’re done.
It’s really not a Caesar salad if you don’t use romaine lettuce.
Julia Child wrote about her first encounter with the Caesar salad in 1925 at its birthplace, the Tijuana restaurant of Cesare “Caesar” Cardini, an Italian immigrant who’s credited with spontaneously creating the dish. Although there’s some controversy among family members as to whose idea it was to come up with what started as an eat-with-your-fingers appetizer, this is the generally believed history of the now-iconic salad.
To do it right, you must use romaine lettuce, and only the heart — the inner crispy-white leaves — left whole. This is the beginning of what makes this salad special. (For a chuckle, watch Jacques Pepin, with Julia Child at his side, perfunctorily dispense of the soft, outer dark-green leaves in this video.) Using the inner leaves makes such a difference, and I’ll admit I’m always irritated when I order a Caesar salad in a restaurant, and all I get are the limp, flavorless ends of the leaves. If you can find them, heads of mini romaine lettuce will work wonderfully too.
Please, please don’t use packaged croutons! Once you make croutons yourself, you’ll wonder how you ever ate those things out of a box. Use whatever kind of bread you want, although a bakery-made loaf or rolls — with airholes to crisp up and hold dressing — will be the best. I’ve included stovetop and oven (or toaster oven) recipes.
And now, the all-important dressing.
The original Caesar dressing is almost an aioli — mayonnaise-like in its ingredients, but with some specific modifications. You’ll want to start with a neutral vegetable oil — olive oil turns bitter when blended at high speeds — and then whisk in some olive oil at the end by hand.
The original Cardini recipe didn’t include anchovies — Worcestershire sauce added umami — but most modern-day recipes do. Personally, I’m squeamish about mashing up tiny fish bodies, so I was thrilled to find anchovy paste (imported from Spain) to use instead.
And either lime or lemon juice will be OK; as it often does, the Spanish word limón caused confusion in this recipe.
The final step: a Caesar salad should be tossed (merrily, I might add) in a large bowl just before serving, to distribute the delicious dressing evenly over the aforementioned lovely lettuce leaves.
Fresh out of the oven: now that’s what I call croutons!
ClassicCaesar Salad
Three steps to make the salad of your dreams!
Step 1: Make croutons
On the stovetop:
2 cups ¾-inch bread cubes
3-4 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pour oil into a wide skillet; heat on high. Add bread cubes. Cook, stirring and tossing, until cubes are golden brown and crisp on all sides, 15–20 minutes. Sprinkle with Parmesan and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Remove from skillet and cool.
In the oven:
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
3 cups hearty bread, cut into ¾-inch cubes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat oven to 375 F (190 C). In a large bowl, toss bread cubes and olive oil. Add Parmesan; toss again. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to baking sheet.
Bake 15–20 minutes until croutons are a pale golden brown and crisp, shaking or turning croutons once or twice.
Remove from oven and cool. Try not to eat them all before the salad is done.
Step 2: Make dressing
1 large egg yolk
1 Tbsp. fresh lime/lemon juice
2-6 oil-packed anchovy fillets or 1-2 tsp. anchovy paste
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp. minced fresh garlic
¼ cup Parmesan cheese, finely grated
1/3 cup canola oil
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 heads romaine lettuce, crisp inner leaves only
Croutons (see recipe above)
Wash and dry lettuce leaves; set aside. Using an immersion blender or food processor, combine egg yolk, lemon juice, anchovies, Worcestershire sauce, garlic and Parmesan. With blender or processor running, drizzle in canola oil until a smooth emulsion forms.
Transfer to a medium-sized bowl. Whisking constantly, drizzle in ¼ cup olive oil. Taste, then season with salt and pepper. Store refrigerated for up to 5 days. — Adapted from www.seriouseats.com
Step 3: Put it all together
In a large bowl, place lettuce leaves. Use tongs to toss lettuce with a few tablespoons of dressing.
Once lettuce is coated, add three-quarters of croutons, a bit more dressing if desired, and toss again. Sprinkle with remaining Parmesan and croutons and serve.
Eating the original Caesar Salad | Restaurante Caesar's in Tijuana, BCN, Mexico
Watch the Caesar salad being made at the Tijuana restaurant where it was invented.
Because Spanish is a gendered language, gorditas are considered female, which has made some argue that the name is derogatory to women and should be changed.
Et tu, Brute?
Collectively, we’ve been talking a lot about language over the past few years: which words are appropriate, which words are not, whether or not we should change elements of our language to express either more inclusivity or less possible offense.
I wrote an article last year about the ways that Spanish is changing (or rather, how some people are attempting to change it — because it seems the jury’s still out on whether or not these changes will become permanent) to become more inclusive, but the matter is far from settled in my own mind.
I like it when my child’s school administration writes “niños y niñas” in their official correspondence. But I admit to rolling my eyes when one of the parents in our WhatsApp group insists on writing “niñes” instead — substituting a letter E for the gender-specific endings A or O is a strategy that some Spanish speakers are using lately to make the gendered Spanish language more gender-neutral.
I’m willing to consider the possibility that this makes me a closed-minded, not-good person (as we all are in some respects), but my gut tells me that it’s an attempt at a culture war focused on distracting people, willfully or not, from Really Big Issues that affect all of us in Very Big Ways, no matter which of a rainbow of genders we may identify with.
Or maybe proponents thought it would be a very simple “use this pronoun with me now, please” request and not a worldwide discussion that would send us all down such a highly emotional rabbit hole, polarizing us while the world alternates between burning and flooding and our economies continue to ensure that workers are barely surviving?
Whew! Long sentence, I know. I’m wrestling with this stuff, y’all.
I’m referring this time, of course, to gorditas, one of Mexico’s most loved masa-based snacks.
It’s one of those stories that when I saw the headline, it put my face in a narrow side-eyed expression. Is this really worthy of a news story? Is someone trying to get us incredulously worked up, taking away precious brain space from things like vote-buying and violence at voting stations — both of which have a very direct effect on how we all live our lives?
Or from the fact that Mexicans are having to depend more and more on remittances from their relatives in the United States because even full-time workers can’t afford to keep up with inflation and the cost of living?
Chances are, there is not some big world organization trying purposefully to distract us, at least not with the names of Mexican food. My guess is that it’s simply an unintended consequence, like lots of things are.
But OK, let’s talk briefly about gorditas.
It never occurred to me that they were named after … fat girls? The food itself is paunchy, so it could very well just be comida gordita – “fat food,” which I think is adorable and which I’ve always assumed was the root of it.
But even if that’s not the case, is it really so big of a deal that we need to have a whole societal discussion about it?
How I long to spend hours discussing things that are affecting all of us in major ways. Could it be that we’re holding so tight to these minor types of arguments because, in what feels like a totally chaotic world, our language — and to some extent the language that those around us use — is something that we can kind of control?
Language is an interesting topic, but when it stops us from tackling other major problems because we’re fighting each other about what to call a snack, it puts me at a loss regarding how to turn down the temperature on our discourse.
I also feel frustrated at this kind of thing because:
It’s an issue that’s just begging to be made fun of. If we already know the strategy du jour of the opposition is to humiliate “the other side” by making them seem like tantrumming toddlers, couldn’t we stop making it so easy for them?
On the long list of liberal causes I care deeply about (economic justice and certainly economic inclusivity, for example), the words we use, while important, should not take up such a large percentage of our collective brain power. We need that brainpower for other important things!
Identity is a big deal right now, and I don’t think the conversation is going to end anytime soon. But gorditas? That’s just an issue so ludicrous that I often wonder if political opponents are simply trotting things like this out and amplifying them to make “our side” seem too ridiculous to even attempt to deal with.
I also can’t help but feel that this “language crisis” in Spanish, like so many other things from the U.S., has been imported, that the powers that be have realized that the “culture wars” are a great strategy for keeping people’s focus elsewhere.
Or maybe someone really did have some very big feelings about the name “gorditas.” If we’re going to change the name, I hope that the new name will at least be widely announced; this gordita would like to keep eating them.
The president speaks at his conference on Tuesday. Presidencia de la República
President López Obrador hit six states last weekend to see his cherished Maya Train project. The courts previously suspended construction on one section of track, but bulldozers recently rolled back in after the project was deemed a matter of national security.
Monday
The first journalistic contribution of the week congratulated the government for its ecological efforts near the Maya Train project. The presidentboasted of reforestation on an industrial scale and celebrated 632 flights at Cancún airport on Saturday alone, before conceding that the tourist mecca’s astounding half-century had taken its environmental toll.
The ruling Morena party’s internal elections were held on the weekend, to elect party officials across 300 districts, which the president called a great democratic exercise: “2.5 million citizens … the participation for an internal election was massive,” he said.
The elections were littered with reports of violence, vote-buying and acarreo, where voters are transported to the polls and told how to vote. However, López Obrador didn’t let a few bad apples spoil his mood. “There were such practices, but in very few booths … I saw that they were repeating and repeating … about fraud and irregularities, but no, it’s nothing compared to what they did,” the president said, passing responsibility over to the opposition.
Shifty elections started in one place, the tabasqueño assured: “They are high flying specialists in fraud,” he said of the National Electoral Institute (INE), an institution slated for reform, which AMLO believes corruptly denied him the presidency in 2006.
Tuesday
“We as Mexicans are at the vanguard, setting an example … inflation in Mexico is lower than in the U.S. and Europe and the peso is strong … our economy is growing. It’s not like that in other countries,” the president assured of the country’s economic credentials on Tuesday.
Scheduled conference speakers wait their turns on Tuesday. Presidencia de la República
The press conferences are rarely short on surprises. That propensity was reaffirmed when a journalist held up a sign to the president reading “Please help me. Journalist of the people.” Once she was invited to speak, the journalist accused another reporter, who wasn’t at the conference, of sexual harassment.
The president put the security minister, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, on the case.
Later in the conference, it was back to business: energy, to be precise. The president said he would send a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden outlining Mexico’s right to protect its energy resources after legal proceedings were opened over violations of the USMCA trade agreement. “They must not treat us as a colony … To put it simply, Mexico is not for sale. Mexico belongs to Mexicans,” the president insisted, refusing to divulge the content of his letter.
Wednesday
Seeker and finder of truth Elizabeth García Vilchis opened the conference on Wednesday with her “Who’s who in the lies of the week” section. “Fear not. Neither rupture, nor departure, nor violation,” she said of the North American USMCA treaty and Mexico’s place in it, adding that the “dignity of Mexico” was at stake and calling a media campaign against the government’s stance an “avalanche.”
García warned of fake social media accounts of the president and public officials, created “to spread hateful messages,” and denied that a journalist who confronted the president at a conference last month had been censured or persecuted.
“No one has persecuted the journalist Reyna Haydee Ramírez,” the president reassured. Ramírez caused a commotion in July when she displayed her scorn for the president and engaged in a verbal spat with another reporter. “When she came [to the conference] she already knew she was going to Spain. I think she already had her tickets,” López Obrador affirmed of the recently relocated Ramírez.
Persecution, the president said later in the conference, was inconceivable in the case of another Spain-based émigré, the former president, Enrique Peña Nieto, who faces money laundering investigations. “Revenge isn’t my strength … [but] we can’t prevent the Attorney General’s office from taking action,” he said, serenely.
Elizabeth García Vilchis presents “Who’s who in the lies of the week,” on Wednesday. Presidencia de la República
Asked about U.S. politician Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan — an island of dubious political status, hotly disputed by China — the president revealed his fears for the globe. “First it was the pandemic, then Russia’s war with Ukraine and now these tensions in Taiwan. We all have problems, all of us, due to the lack of economic growth, there is more and more poverty and global inflation,” he bemoaned.
However, in a pragmatic vein, the tabasqueño had some solutions, as well as a few suggestions. “What do we have to do? Promote productive activities, create jobs, serve the poor and seek the cooperation of nations … for development. No to provocations, no to war … Is it not too much to ask the United States, Russia, and China to accept this proposal? … No government in the world … should act irresponsibly,” the president admonished, before praying for the miners’ safe rescue.
Civil Protection coordinator Laura Velázquez joined the conference remotely to share an update on the effort to rescue a group of miners trapped in Coahuila. Presidencia de la República
Friday
Velázquez said the 10 miners were still stuck in Sabinas but that a team of 383 were working to extract 5,111 cubic meters of water per day to set them free. “We mustn’t lose hope,” the president said of their rescue.
However, for the Mexican economy, López Obrador said faith alone wouldn’t be enough. “Our currency is strong, it hasn’t been devalued … it fell due to what’s going on in Taiwan, the visit that Mrs. Pelosi did. Hopefully they won’t keep doing those things. It’s important to achieve peace in the world,” he asserted.
Once again, the president was focused on solutions. Having referred back to polling data showing the Indian prime minister to be the most popular leader in the world — AMLO was the world’s second most highly regarded — he offered another proposal to solve the conflict in Europe: a five-year truce. “I would propose three people [to participate in the truce] … the secretary general of the UN [António Guterres], the president of India, Modi … I understand he has good relations with China, Russia and the United States and the third would be Pope Francisco,” he said, shortly before striding away to attend to the nation.
Maya was confiscated in Quintana Roo by the federal environmental protection agency Profepa in 2015.
Animal rescue in Mexico suffered a serious blow during the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, when the government decided to shut down its network of 11 wildlife conservation and rehabilitation centers.
Since then, local shelters have at least popped up, thanks to concerned vets and biologists. Confiscated exotic wildlife like macaws, crocodiles, parrots and howler monkeys now end up in locally funded shelters like Agua Azul and Villa Fantasia in Guadalajara. But what if the mistreated or confiscated animal is a puma or a jaguar, unaccustomed to living in a cage or even in the roomy enclosures provided by modern zoos?
This is when the wildlife rescue centers turn to the UMAs.
An UMA is an Animal Management Unit licensed by the government to care for or raise exotic or endangered creatures — from crocodiles to tarantulas — as well as jaguars.
Pancho, 15 years old, is enjoying his last days at Potrero de Mulas. In the wild, pumas rarely live beyond the age of 13. Chris Lloyd
Mexico has only a handful of UMAs permitted to handle this big-cat breed, and one of the most fascinating of these is the Potrero de Mulas (Mule Pasture), hidden away in a jungle-filled valley 35 kilometers east of Puerto Vallarta, at 830 meters altitude.
The Potrero de Mulas website says that, besides being a UMA, it is a center for ecotourism, environmental education and recreational activities, with cabins to rent, a campsite, trails to follow, rock walls to climb and great food (for groups over 20).
Apart from all this, photos show Mule Pasture to be an extraordinarily beautiful place, despite its less-than-attractive-sounding name. I contacted the owner, Marisol Lovera.
“You are welcome to stay with us,” she told me,” but you will need four-wheel drive to get here.”
From Mascota to Puerto Vallarta this Jalisco road sign reminds visitors that they are in big cat territory.
So off we went a few weeks later, in the robust Toyota Tacoma of Canadian geologist Chris Lloyd. It’s a four-hour drive from Guadalajara to the little town of La Estancia, located on the highway between Mascota, Jalisco, and Puerto Vallarta.
La Estancia is where the fun began.
I had been told that you needed to drive across 30 rivers to reach Potrero de Mulas. Well, by my calculations, that’s not true. I counted only 24 crossings, and they were all streams, not rivers.
By the time we crossed the last one, we were convinced that the “many streams” were really just one insanely meandering creek known as Arroyo Bulera, which seems to have more twists in it than a Ken Follett novel. But it is thanks to the endlessly undulating Bulera that Potrero de Mulas has its enchanting lagoon, a great place for a swim after tramping around in the jungle.
The Inca jay, Cyanocorax yncas, is one of 53 bird species you might see at Potrero de Mulas. Emmanuel Guevara
Upon our arrival, we enjoyed a delicious meal of pollo en salsa de mostaza (chicken in mustard sauce) and brochetas de champiñones (mushroom kabobs), after which we headed off to see the jaguars.
We didn’t have far to walk: just a few steps away from the restaurant, we were introduced to Negrita, a black jaguar.
“She came to us three months ago from the Tlajomulco Wildlife Rescue Center,” said Lovera. “She had been turned over to them after being confiscated from someone who had kept her in a rather small cage — containing nothing but a slab of concrete for a floor — for five or six years. All that time, she had been living on a poor diet, so she had lost weight. Her hair was matted and dull, and she had sores on her back.
During Negrita’s whole life, she had never heard the sounds of nature or of another feline, only the voices of human beings.
Rescued after six years of mistreatment, Negrita, a black jaguar, is now healthy, happy and often visited by suitors.
“So when she arrived here, we tried to put her into a roomy enclosure, but she was frightened. So we are temporarily keeping her here close to us,” Lovera said. “And now, after just a few months, she has overcome all this. Now she seems happy when she’s visited by suitors who come calling at night. And she is back to her correct weight and looking good.
“Because of her, by the way, we know that there are a lot of big cats roaming freely around this area, and we have even caught them on video. She is just about ready to go live in one of the big enclosures.”
We then crossed the gorgeous lagoon next to the dining hall and came to the first of several big-cat-sized enclosures, each of which is typically 2,000 to 5,000 square meters in size. Here we caught a glimpse of a puma or cougar named Pancho, an old-timer of 15 years.
“Pancho came to us from Nayarít in 2008,” said caretaker Enrique López. “The vet said we should feed him ground beef because his teeth are bad, but he didn’t go for it. He likes his meat au naturel.”
How to cool off after a day of hiking in a cloud forest.
The next enclosure was the home of Nairi the Lynx. She had been burned in a huge forest fire that devastated Guadalajara’s Primavera Forest two years ago.
“When they found Nairi in the forest, her paws were burned, as well as her ears and her tail,” López said, “so she didn’t look exactly like a lynx.”
Her rescuers brought her to Villa Fantasia Rescue Center, where they took good care of her.
“They gave her a baby bottle and everything, but she suffered from stress and got depressed. So they brought her here, where she’s doing really well,” López said. “Someone is going to give us a male lynx, which is also imprinted and used to human beings, and we hope they will have babies that we can release in the Primavera forest.”
Next, we wandered along a dirt road through the jungle for 500 meters without seeing any more big cats — until we arrived at the last enclosure, a really big one, 12,000 square meters in size. Here we were delighted to spot Maya, a female jaguar who had been confiscated in Quintana Roo by the federal environmental protection agency Profepa in 2015.
After a rappel, visitors climb the via ferrata on the center’s “natural climbing wall.” ITESO
Maya seemed happy to see us and came right up to the fence to say hello. We were entirely absorbed in taking photos of her when suddenly — in a flash and apparently out of nowhere — a full-sized male jaguar made its dramatic appearance by pouncing onto the fence at the end of a flying leap, as if to say, “Hey! I live here too!”
This, we learned, was Selva, Maya’s mate. In 2019, the pair of them had two babies, Yamil and Itzia, who are doing well in another enclosure.
Should you ever get tired of watching the big cats, Potrero de Mulas also has a 900-meter-long interpretive trail that introduces visitors to the flora of this cloud forest. Here you can see the Pacific Magnolia, the endemic Jalisco Pine and even Cyathea Costaricensis, the world’s tallest tree fern.
Following what seems to be the local custom, the trail cuts across the serpentine Bulera Creek numerous times. Crossing it requires hopping from rock to rock, so for this hike, you’d better wear shoes that aren’t afraid of water.
Maya the jaguar lives with her mate Selva in an enclosure 12,000 square meters in size.
Potrero de Mulas also has zip lines and a high sheer rock wall for rappelling, with a via ferrata (iron rungs fixed in the wall) for climbing back up.
While engaged in these activities, or just wandering about, you can’t help but notice that this is also a wonderful place for bird-watching.
Four nicely printed guides to the local birds describe 53 species. In no time at all, birder Chris Lloyd spotted a green jay, a cinnamon-rumped seed eater, a grey-crowned woodpecker, an orange-fronted parakeet and a sulfur-bellied flycatcher, which isn’t even in the guides.
Like most UMAs in Mexico, Potrero de Mulas receives no help from the government. Its expenses are somewhat offset by fees paid by visitors.
Beside caring for big cats, Potrero de Mulas is also dedicated to the reintroduction of animals like the white-tailed deer and this peccary.
“Here we have six cabins of different sizes,” says Marisol Lovera, “each with a kitchen, hot water and internet. So we can house 22 guests. In our campground, which also has internet, we can take another 20, and then we have a hostel where we can accommodate 16 more people.”
Look for the route to Potrero de Mulas on Wikiloc. If you don’t happen to have four-wheel drive or a truck, you can leave your car in a safe place in La Estancia and transport to Potrero de Mulas will be arranged.
For more information, see their web page in English. To contact them, use their Senda del Jaguar Facebook page or call them via Whatsapp at 322-101-8486 or 331-760-0383. Or reach them by email at [email protected].
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.
To follow the center’s Interpretive Trail, visitors must make numerous crossings of the serpentine Bulera Creek.
Inside one of Potrero de Mulas’ cabins available for rent.
Hiker Maruca González on Potrero de Mulas’ interpretive trail.
The Blue Lizard Campground can accommodate 20 people and comes with hot water.
The teenagers tried to flee, but were locked up with their families' permission (pictured: Mixtec youth in the neighboring Montaña region).
Two 14-year-old girls were imprisoned for over 24 hours earlier this week after they attempted to flee their hometown in Guerrero to avoid impending forced marriages.
The indigenous Mixtec teenagers tried to leave El Capulín, a community in the Costa Chica region, last Sunday but were detained before they could escape. With the consent of their families, they were locked up in cells at the El Capulín police station.
The girls’ parents had arranged marriages for their daughters, a common practice in some indigenous towns in Guerrero. Young girls are sold into marriage for 40,000 to 200,000 pesos (about US $2,000 to $10,000), according to a 2021 report by the newspaper Reforma, which described the sale of child brides as a form of 21st-century slavery.
The Guerrero State Human Rights Commission (CDHEG) intervened in the case of the El Capulín girls and acting in conjunction with Tlacoachistlahuaca municipal authorities, managed to secure their release on Monday. They were returned to their families the same day.
Authorities told the families that the girls’ imprisonment and forcing them into marriage was a violation of their human rights. The CDHEG and Tlacoachistlahuaca will monitor their situation to avoid any further violations.
The girls’ night behind bars came eight months after another Mixtec teenager was jailed in the Montaña region of Guerrero after she too fled her home to avoid an arranged marriage. The family of Anayeli, aged 14 or 15 according to differing media reports, had arranged for her to marry a slightly older boy. The girl’s mother had agreed to a payment of 200,000 pesos from the boy’s family.
People below the age of 18 were banned from marrying across Mexico in 2019, but enforcing the law has been difficult in some indigenous communities.
During a trip to the Montaña region late last year, President López Obrador rejected claims that the practice of forced marriages was widespread, asserting that a media campaign had made the sale of girls for marriage or prostitution appear to be a bigger problem than it really is.
“I’m not here to look at that because it’s not the rule,” he said. “There are a lot of moral, cultural and spiritual values in the communities. It might be the exception, but it’s not the rule.”
The Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico promptly condemned the federal government for downplaying the seriousness of Mexico’s child trafficking problem, including the sale of young girls, saying it is a crime that the Mexican state must investigate and eradicate.
Reported cases of human trafficking are up 22% this year. shutterstock
On July 30, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Mexico launched the Corazón Azul 2022 campaign, which aims to increase visibility and raise awareness of the many contexts in which human trafficking can occur in order to improve preventative measures and timely reporting.
“Our commitment as a country should not be reduced to certain types of trafficking victims; it must turn to prevention, not only of the crime, but of its structural causes,” said Félix Santana, the technical secretary of the Intersecretarial Commission against Human Trafficking within Mexico’s Interior Ministry (SEGOB).
The announcement came on the heels of newly released data from the Executive Secretariat for Public Security (SESNSP) showing Mexican authorities identified at least 494 victims of human trafficking across the country between January and June of this year.
This represented a 22% uptick from the 406 victims recorded during the first half of 2021. If the current trend holds, officials will see nearly 1,000 victims of human trafficking by the end of the year, the most since 2015, according to an InSight Crime analysis of SESNSP data.
However, the true number of victims far exceeds those reported. Civil society groups like Consejo Ciudadano estimate that just one of every 100 human trafficking cases in Mexico is reported. Victims may not speak out for a number of reasons, including a lack of available resources, to avoid being stigmatized, or because they have been manipulated not to see themselves as victims.
The U.S. State Department’s 2022 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report found that, for the eighth year in a row, the Mexican government “does not fully meet the minimum standards” to combat and eliminate human trafficking but is “making significant efforts” to do so.
Those with the highest risk of being trafficked in Mexico, according to the State Department, included unaccompanied children, indigenous persons, asylum seekers and migrants, members of the LGBTQ community, and informal sector workers, among other vulnerable populations.
Reports of human trafficking incidents by state.(Graphic courtesy of Consejo Ciudadano)
Rather than at the hands of Mexican organized crime groups, “the majority of trafficking cases occur among family, intimate partners, acquaintances on social media, or through employment-related traps,” the report stated.
InSight Crime analysis
Human trafficking crimes take place all across Mexico and can transcend borders, but a number of states along the U.S.-Mexico border have long served as human trafficking hotspots.
Through the first six months of 2022, the states of Baja California, Chihuahua, and Nuevo León accounted for one quarter (122) of all human trafficking victims identified and a little less than 25% (95) of the 411 investigations opened by authorities.
Over the last year and a half, these three states were also among the top 10 states where Consejo Ciudadano’s National Human Trafficking Hotline received the most calls to report human trafficking.
This data helps paint part of the picture. In Baja California and Chihuahua, the border cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez are known hubs for sexual and labor exploitation, while the manufacturing center of Monterrey in Nuevo León is a long-time operational base for human traffickers.
Given the economic makeup and transitory nature of these cities on migratory routes traversing Mexico, internal and foreign migrants are frequently lured there and victimized. Victims are entrapped by their exploiters in a number of ways, but since the onset of COVID-19, deceptive recruitment tactics have increasingly turned to social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Those targeted are presented with attractive job offers that pay well but lack specific details on what the job entails. Stated promises of personal and professional development act as “a mask for exploitative conditions,” according to Consejo Ciudadano. Victims may be pushed into working longer hours for less pay or forced into prostitution after accepting a job offer as a waitresses or as part of a fake modeling contract.
The most reported form of exploitation is sexual, but trafficking experts told InSight Crime that doesn’t make it the most prevalent type of trafficking. Labor exploitation in the agricultural, construction, and manufacturing industries in Mexico is also widespread, but much less reported. With a growing number of people living in poverty and other precarious conditions, there are many desperate workers vulnerable to exploitation.
Whereas predatory groups like the Zetas once operated their own prostitution rings, today human trafficking does not represent a central revenue source for Mexico’s major organized crime groups. The industry is largely dominated by independent family clans that carefully select those they prey on.
Reprinted from InSight Crime. Parker Asmann is a writer with InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.
The shots recommended for infants protect against tuberculosis, hepatitis B, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, influenza, measles, chickenpox and more.
Less than one-third of infants have had all their recommended vaccines, a situation that health experts warn could lead to outbreaks of diseases such as polio, measles and whooping cough.
The 2021 National Health and Nutrition Survey found that just 27.5% of one-year-olds and 31.1% of two-year-olds have had all six crucial vaccines. The recommended shots provide protection against a range of diseases including tuberculosis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, polio, influenza, pneumococcal infections, rotavirus, measles, chickenpox and mumps.
Jaime Sepúlveda, a former deputy health minister who is now executive director of the Institute for Global Health Sciences at the University of California in San Francisco, attributed the low immunization rates among infants to a lack of vaccine supply.
The federal government has failed to guarantee supply because it hasn’t bought enough vaccines on the international market, he told the newspaper Reforma. There hasn’t been a shortage of childhood vaccines on that market, Sepúlveda said, attributing the problem to government incompetence.
Jaime Sepúlveda, a former deputy health minister-turned-academic. University of California
“It’s very concerning because we’re seeing a resurgence of polio in African countries in addition to endemic disease in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” he said. “It’s even extended to New York now,” Sépulveda said, referring to a polio case detected in Rockland County last month — the first reported in the United States in almost a decade.
“When I had the [childhood] vaccination program under my care we had coverage above 94%,” he said, referring to the period he was deputy health minister in the 1988-94 government led by former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari.
“We had the fortune of eradicating polio from the national territory during the administration of [former health minister] Dr. Jesús Kumate,” Sépulveda added.
Miguel Betancourt, former president of the Mexican Society of Public Health, shares the view that the low vaccination rates are worrying because it means unvaccinated children — and adults — are susceptible to contagious diseases.
Low levels of vaccination coverage create fertile ground for the reemergence of diseases that authorities have worked hard to control, he said. Betancourt said that a measles outbreak in Mexico City two years ago was the result of low vaccination rates against that disease.
He said that vaccination rates among young children began to decline 15 years ago and the situation worsened during the coronavirus pandemic.
Citing information from the Mexican Vaccination Observatory, Betancourt said the low rates among infants are mainly due to a lack of vaccines at health care centers. The government didn’t buy enough vaccines or didn’t distribute them in a timely manner, he said.
Marines stand guard over Wednesday's cocaine seizure.
Mexican marines have seized more than a tonne of cocaine and hundreds of liters of fuel from a boat discovered off the coast of Michoacán, the navy announced on Wednesday.
After a high-speed chase at sea, the marines forced the alleged traffickers back toward land near the beach-side community of Barras de Nexpa, 60 kilometers west of Lázaro Cárdenas. The navy seized 1.6 tonnes of cocaine and 432 liters of fuel and arrested three people, it said in a press release.
After navy intelligence identified that a drug shipment was likely to pass through the area, a maritime patrol plane spotted a suspicious speedboat with three outboard motors. Two marine units were then dispatched to intercept the shipment, navy officials said.
“The crew of the suspicious vessel, caught unawares, increased their speed and upon arriving at the beach they fled …”
SEMAR asegura más de una tonelada de cocaína y diversos efectos en Costas de Michoacán
Navy personnel seized the vessel’s cargo and later the same day captured another vessel.
A similarly sized shipment of cocaine was seized in Mexico City in late July, the largest bust in the city’s history. The 1.68-tonne shipment had an estimated worth of 400 million pesos (US $19.6 million) but could have been sold for double that price if it had reached the United States.
