Juanita Alonso: 'It is easy to go to prison, but it is difficult to get out.'
An indigenous Guatemalan migrant who was imprisoned in Mexico for more than seven years without a trial was freed last weekend.
Juana Alonzo Santizo, a Mayan Chuj woman, was jailed in 2014 after she was arrested in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, on kidnapping charges.
A court ordered her immediate release last Saturday and she returned to Guatemala on Sunday.
Netzaí Sandoval, head of Mexico’s federal public defenders office, said the court found that there was no consistent evidence against Alonzo, who left the Guatemalan town of San Mateo Ixtatán in 2014 to migrate to the United States to find work.
Sandoval, whose office defended Alonzo, said the charges she faced were not translated into her native language of Chuj until this year. The 35-year-old didn’t speak Spanish when she was detained, but learned the language during her lengthy stay in pre-trial detention.
Sandoval also said that Alonzo was tortured and forced to sign a confession she didn’t understand.
Her release comes after a campaign for her freedom that was supported by her family, her community in Guatemala, Mexican and international groups and President López Obrador. The Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office eventually dropped the charges against her.
The Centro Prodh human rights organization, one of the groups that supported the “Freedom for Juanita” campaign, said the work of the media in documenting the case and in doing so “putting a face to this story of injustice” played an important role in obtaining justice for Alonzo.
It also said the United Nations played an important role by confirming “the abuses committed against this honorable indigenous woman and migrant.”
Sandoval described Alonzo’s case as “totally aberrant,” asserting that her rights were violated because she is a woman, an indigenous person, a migrant, poor and didn’t know Spanish.
The Associated Press reported that an emotional Alonzo was met at the Guatemala City airport by her family last Sunday. After collapsing into her father’s and uncle’s arms, she changed into traditional Mayan Chuj clothes, AP said.
“It is easy to go to prison, but it is difficult to get out of it,” Alonzo said in hesitant Spanish.
“Her crime was being unable to speaking Spanish,” said her uncle, Pedro Alonzo. “Who is going to pay for that scar?”
There are thousands of people in Mexico’s prisons who have never been convicted of a crime. Official statistics show that over 40% of the prison population is made up of people who have not been convicted or sentenced.
One person determined to put an end to the common practice of incarcerating people for months or years before they face trial is Supreme Court Chief Justice Arturo Zaldívar, who said earlier this month that there has been an “abuse” of preventative prison in Mexico.
El Vani was allegedly a lynchpin of a cattle trafficking operation, but was arrested last year on drug-related charges in Mexico City. insight crime
Ranchers from Mexico’s eastern state of Veracruz know a way to buy cheap cattle: Drive to a remote part of the Chiapas-Guatemala border and purchase cows being brought illegally across. But behind the smugglers and the brokers, those who allow this thriving business to exist hide in the shadows.
Benemérito de las Américas may be one of the most isolated towns in Mexico. Sitting on a remote part of the Mexico-Guatemala border along the Usumacinta River, hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest city, the town has no customs presence and no formal border crossing. It has one gas station, one supermarket, one hotel and a few restaurants.
Yet it is a thriving hub for a growing transnational economy: cattle smuggling.
The river near Benemérito is crowded with a large number of boats carrying cattle and other types of contraband from Guatemala to collection points dotted along the Mexican side, usually at ranches. Dozens of tractor-trailers, loaded with cattle, wait to fuel up at the gas station or are parked outside the offices of the local cattle ranchers’ union.
One rancher, Eduardo, heard of the brisk cattle business in Benemérito and decided to travel there from his home in the south of Veracruz state. He wanted to see first-hand the level of competition he was up against.
“Buyers prefer to go there [to Benemérito] because it is cheaper. The cattle that come from Central America are not subject to the controls that we are forced to have,” he told InSight Crime.
Eduardo was in an ideal position to profit. As a member of Mexico’s National Confederation of Livestock Organizations he believed he had the contacts needed to get access to ranches in Guatemala where the cattle are collected before being moved to Mexico. The reality was a letdown. According to Eduardo, just before entering the center of Benemérito, a small road leads down to the Usumacinta River. Long, wooden canoes, carrying dozens of cows and calves, arrive there and unload their cargo. Eduardo appraised the cows as “old and rough.”
Crossing into Guatemala to inspect the cattle proved impossible. “The cattle come from Nicaragua and are gathered in Guatemala to bring them to Mexico,” he said, having learned this during his trip. “Armed people guard the transfer of cattle. They told us not to go any farther. Criminal groups are taking care of this business,” Eduardo added.
The routes through Central America used by cattle smugglers. insight crime
Another source from Veracruz, Gilberto, had been buying cattle in Benemérito for eight years. He was tasked with procuring cattle from Guatemala for a number of farms up the coast of Veracruz in eastern Mexico and delivering them to their buyer.
Gilbert told InSight Crime that ranchers seek to increase their production levels with cattle from Central America, since production in Mexico is low while demand is always increasing. “That area [Benemérito] is very tricky. You deal with bad, bad people. Many heads have fallen in this business. But if you show up and respect the deals, you won’t have a problem,” he told InSight Crime.
In all that time, Gilberto never met those who actually owned the cattle being sold. He only dealt with brokers. “It is very difficult to reach [the people who sell the cattle]. You will never talk to them, you will never know who they are,” said the rancher.
Gilberto never asked any questions. He bought the cattle and left.
The entire cattle trafficking industry is shrouded in secrecy. During field work in Benemérito, InSight Crime learned that the identities of those who own the ranches near the town are also hidden. “The town has no formal customs or tax office. But it has a different sort of ‘customs’ presence,” said one source in the town, who is connected to cattle trafficking but requested anonymity.
Several large properties along the river through which the cattle pass in both Mexico and Guatemala are owned by one person, referred to as La Aduana (Customs). “They call him Customs because his lands are half in Guatemala and half in Chiapas,” explained the source, who added that ranchers frequently quip that “they brought animals through Customs.”
The well-worn path
It is no coincidence that the ranchers InSight Crime spoke to were from Veracruz. This state, which takes up much of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, is a cattle powerhouse. One of the main beef-producing areas in the country, it is also a major corridor for the transport of cargo from southern Mexico to the United States.
Truck parked outside the local ranchers’ union in Benemérito de las Américas. insight crime
And in August 2021, cattle ranchers and smugglers alike in southern Veracruz took notice when they heard about a specific arrest. On August 15, authorities in Mexico City announced the capture of a man identified only as Jovanni “N,” alias “El Vani.” His arrest document listed him as a member of the Familia Michoacana, an important if dwindling criminal group from the western state of Michoacán. He faced a raft of charges, including kidnapping, extortion, drug trafficking, criminal association and possession of firearms exclusively for use by the army. When police went to arrest him, he allegedly tried to bribe them with $2 million Mexican pesos (around US $100,000) to let him go.
There was no mention anywhere of El Vani being involved in cattle trafficking. Yet, according to multiple interviews carried out by InSight Crime, El Vani was the lynchpin of the entire cattle trafficking operation between Benemérito and Veracruz.
“If you want to know about cattle from Central America being trafficked to Mexico, he is the key,” one source from Coatzacoalcos, in southern Veracruz, told InSight Crime shortly after El Vani was arrested.
One rancher, respected as a leader in his community, only agreed to speak about El Vani if no details were given about where the interview took place. “He was not famous among the population, only among certain circles of ranchers. He dealt with the most powerful ranchers, those at a very high level. He didn’t give the little ones any attention,” he told InSight Crime.
Controlling the local cattle trafficking trade had made El Vani a wealthy and influential man. Hailing from the town of Carranza, right on the Veracruz-Chiapas border, his house is the most famous building around, so ostentatious it is known locally as “Disneyland.” Residents of Carranza also said that the nickname El Vani may have been invented by authorities because locally he is known as “El Gallo” (The Rooster), a nickname given to brave or aggressive people.
In addition to the Disneyland mansion, Carranza has many cattle ranches, where thousands of animals are fattened up and sold each year.
One rancher, who is also a member of one of the 19 vigilante groups in the region, recalled an instance where one of their colleagues was kidnapped by a local criminal group and El Vani, not the authorities, helped to free him. Like all those who dared to speak about El Vani, he requested complete anonymity.
When El Vani’s brother was similarly kidnapped, the community rallied to help. “We brought a group to help him, and they quickly released the brother. El Vani thanked us personally,” said the rancher.
Another source in Veracruz, who described El Vani as a good friend, said “you could deal with him when he was good and healthy [meaning sober]. The problem was that when he got drunk, the devil got in him. He would start shooting and doing ugly things.”
But beyond these glimpses and personal stories, it proved very difficult to gain a clear picture of exactly how El Vani’s business worked. The scale of this criminal economy though was evident.
Mexico’s National Agricultural Health and Safety Service (SENASICA) estimates that around 800,000 head of cattle annually are smuggled into the country from Guatemala, though no data has yet been published. These cattle are sent to states across the country, where they both complement national meat production for consumption in Mexico and exports to the United States.
Ranchers interviewed in Veracruz and Chiapas told InSight Crime that each animal introduced from Guatemala is sold for approximately $400. This means that cattle being smuggled in could potentially be worth around $320 million a year.
El Vani’s arrest temporarily slowed this business down. A leading rancher from Veracruz told InSight Crime that after he was detained, those rounding up the cattle in Guatemala and bringing them into Mexico were forced to adjust. “Today, [the business] has slowed down, not so many cages [vehicles with cattle] are entering. It’s complicated,” he said.
“Does the slowdown have to do with El Vani’s arrest?”
“Yes, yes. But they are regrouping. While they are reorganizing and reaching new deals, it’s slowed down. But [this pause] won’t last long because there are a lot of interests here.”
Those other interests soon became clear. The entry of cattle from Central America to Mexico also serves as a shield to bring in cocaine. “The entry of livestock is a very, very sensitive and dangerous issue because it is in the hands of organizations who do not generally deal with livestock. It is a façade, behind which other things can be brought in,” he explained.
Ranchers and local officials in southeastern Mexico confirmed to InSight Crime that cocaine is often smuggled in alongside the cattle. The way in which the smuggled cattle are then “laundered” in Mexico and enter the legitimate supply chain also offers drug trafficking operations a chance to launder money. “It is a double business [livestock and drug trafficking]. It’s very, very big,” said the rancher, who is a member of the vigilante groups.
The arrest
And suddenly, the circumstances of El Vani’s arrest may begin to make more sense. Statements from authorities made zero mention of any involvement in cattle smuggling, claiming that he was engaged in “drug trafficking inside and outside the country.”
Some more light was shed on El Vani’s possible connections to La Familia Michoacana. One rancher from Carranza told InSight Crime that El Vani had many friends from Michoacán and that many ranchers in Veracruz hailed from the western state.
In fact, InSight Crime learned from interviews in the region that one of the most prominent ranchers in southern Veracruz, who is close to El Vani, is the brother of one of the foremost gang bosses and drug traffickers in Michoacán. This rancher did not respond to several interview requests and there is no evidence to date that he is involved in any illegal activity.
Yet authorities have remained quiet about any connections between El Vani and cattle. At the time of his arrest, Veracruz state Governor Cuitláhuac García publicly stated that local prosecutors were investigating the case, but never once referred to livestock.
InSight Crime tried to dig deeper. Requests for information from prosecutors in Veracruz, Chiapas and Tabasco, all key states for cattle smuggling, came up empty. The local Attorney General’s Office in Mexico City, where El Vani was arrested, said it was not looking into his case and that the federal Attorney General’s Office was handling the investigation. They did not respond either.
Finally, InSight Crime turned to Mexico’s National Transparency Platform to request any documentary evidence about El Vani. The request was denied, and the information deemed confidential.
This is the second article in a three-part investigative series by InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime. The series looks at how cattle produced in Central America are smuggled into Mexico and laundered in a variety of ways to enter the legal food supply chain before beef products are consumed in both Mexico and the United States. Read the full investigation here.
María Herrera meets Pope Francis on Wednesday. Centro Prodh
Pope Francis met Wednesday with a Michoacán woman whose four sons are among Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people.
María Herrera Magdaleno traveled to Vatican City to meet the pontiff on behalf of the large number of Mexicans whose loved ones have disappeared.
Jesuitas México and the Centro Prodh human rights organization said in a statement that the pope greeted and blessed Herrera, who hails from Pajacuarán, a municipality near Michoacán’s border with Jalisco.
Representatives of those two groups traveled to Rome with the mother of eight, whose sons Raúl, Salvador, Luis Armando and Gustavo have been missing for over a decade.
“The meeting occurred in the context of Mexico reaching more than 100,000 missing people, according to official statistics,” the statement said.
“In representation of thousands of Mexican families, María Herrera delivered information about this painful reality as well as the forensic backlog of more than 50,000 unidentified bodies and remains. On the person of Mrs. Herrera, the Holy Father blessed all the mothers and families who are looking for their disappeared loved ones.”
Jesuitas México and Centro Prodh said the meeting constituted “a call to governments to look for all missing people, identify people who still haven’t received a dignified burial due to the forensic crisis and adopt effective public policies to reduce violence.”
“It is also an invitation to churches, communities of faith and society to develop greater empathy with the victims of violence,” they said.
Herrera’s meeting with the pope came after she wrote to him earlier this month and after the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances said in a report that abductions of children, adolescents and women are on the rise and that impunity in missing person cases is “almost absolute.”
In her letter, Herrera noted that Mexico’s missing persons count had passed 100,000 and that her four sons were among those whose whereabouts are unknown.
“In the face of the indifference of our governments mothers have to go out and look [for our children with] our own hands, picks and shovels,” she wrote.
“Don’t forget us,” Herrera implored. “Pray for us and call on our governments to look for the missing and stop the violence, on our pastors to accompany us more and on society to be more empathetic with our pain,” she wrote.
The Durango display at Tianguis Turístico, Latin America's biggest tourism show.
International tourist numbers will come close to reaching pre-pandemic levels this year, federal Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco predicted Sunday.
Speaking at the inauguration of the Tianguis Turístico tourism industry event in Acapulco, Guerrero, Torruco predicted that Mexico will receive 40 million international visitors in 2022, which would be just 5 million short of the 45 million record set in 2019.
He predicted that tourism-generated revenue will be US $24.25 billion and declared that tourism in Mexico will have recovered “almost 100%” by the end of the year.
Torruco asserted that the recovery is possible thanks to actions implemented during the pandemic such as the application of vaccines on a massive scale and the establishment of virus mitigation measures in businesses.
“All these actions have allowed the recovery of the sector to occur more quickly,” he said.
The minister predicted that the sector will generate 8.3% of Mexico’s GDP in 2022, which would be just 0.3% lower than 2019. He noted that foreign investment in the sector totaled $2.05 billion last year, or 6.5% of total foreign direct investment.
“This data is encouraging and speaks of increasingly solid tourism activity that will continue strengthening with the different infrastructure actions … [of] the federal government such as the recent inauguration of the Felipe Ángeles International Airport,” Torruco said.
He also noted that the airport in Chetumal, Quintana Roo, has been upgraded and engineering studies are underway for the construction of an airport in Tulum in the same state. The Tepic airport in Nayarit is being modernized and the Copper Canyon Airport in Creel, Chihuahua, will soon begin operations, Torruco added.
“Air connectivity is fundamental to boost tourism,” the tourism minister said.
With regard to tourism sector employment, Torruco observed that job numbers have already exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Almost 4.4 million people were employed in tourism-related jobs in the first quarter of 2022, a 3.3% uptick compared to the same period of 2019 and a 19.1% increase compared to a year earlier.
Torruco said 8.6% of all Mexican workers are employed in the tourism industry.
In a meeting with the president of the Mexican Association of Hotels and Motels, the tourism minister highlighted that average hotel occupancy in 70 monitored tourism destinations in the first quarter of the year was 50.6%, a 22.8% increase compared to the same period of 2021.
His meeting with Juan José Fernández Carrillo was one of a huge number of encounters between tourism sector stakeholders at this year’s Tianguis, Latin America’s largest tourism industry event.
The Tourism Ministry said in a statement that more than 65,000 “business appointments” would take place at the four-day event, which concludes Wednesday.
The airline's CEO said moving more flights to AIFA was good business. deposit photos
The budget airline Volaris will soon add 10 additional flights from the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), located north of Mexico City in México state.
Starting in July, the low-cost carrier will fly from AIFA to Acapulco, Guadalajara, Huatulco, La Paz, Mérida, Mexicali, Oaxaca, Puerto Vallarta, Puerto Escondido and Los Cabos. It already operates services from AIFA to Tijuana and Cancún.
The airline announced the new routes Tuesday at the annal Tianguis Turístico tourism industry event in Acapulco.
AIFA, located about 50 kilometers north of downtown Mexico City, opened in late March but currently has few commercial flights. The Toluca airport, located about 60 kilometers west of the capital, has no commercial services.
However, Volaris announced that it will resume services in August from that airport to Tijuana, Puerto Vallarta, Cancún, Guadalajara, Los Cabos and Huatulco.
There are 30 million potential passengers in the greater Mexico City area and that market will benefit from the airline’s “redistribution” of its services, he said. Millions of people live in closer proximity to AIFA or the Toluca airport than to the AICM.
Beltranena said Volaris will be able to offer 1 million extra seats annually on flights out of the Mexico City metropolitan area as a result of its use of three different airports.
“I want to reiterate our commitment to the strengthening of the [aviation] industry to take air travel to more Mexicans,” he said at a Tianguis Turístico event attended by federal Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco.
“More than 1.2 million customers travel with us for the first time every year and 84 of our 190 national routes are exclusive because our cost model competes with buses and transforms the economy and air transport,” Beltranena said.
A National Guardsman wrestles a migrant to the ground.
Arbitrary detentions, excessive use of force and sexual violence are among the abuses committed against migrants by the armed forces and the National Guard, according to a new report by six non-governmental organizations.
The Bajo la Bota (Under the Boot) report by the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law and five other groups examines the militarization of migration policy in Mexico and compiles testimonies from scores of migrants.
“Mexico has opted for the implementation of a migration policy without a human rights focus, making use of the National Guard and other military forces as an apparatus of migration control even when this goes against migration regulations and international human rights law,” the report said. “… The National Guard members [carrying out] migration tasks don’t act as guarantors of rights but as agents of contention and deportation or even as generators of risks for migrants and their families,” it said.
As a result of interviews with 76 migrants from African, Latin American and Caribbean countries, the NGOs documented cases of arbitrary and illegal detentions, racial profiling, violence against women and the excessive use of force.
“I’m always very scared of the police and the National Guard – when we go to buy things, when we’re walking, at any time of day or night. It’s a fear of being taken to the [detention center]. They don’t care if you’re an asylum seeker, they don’t care if you have children and a wife. The National Guard doesn’t care about anything,” said a Haitian migrant in Tapachula, Chiapas, a hub for migrants who have crossed the border with Guatemala.
“Every time I walk I see the police arresting people. The police asked me for identification and took it from me. They said it wasn’t valid. They searched me, they touched my body,” said a migrant from Cameroon.
A Nicaraguan woman recalled being detained in Chiapas along with her three young children even though they had been granted humanitarian visas. National Guard members and National Immigration Institute (INM) agents subsequently took them to a town on the border with Guatemala and dumped them in the middle of the night with the expectation they would leave the country. They and other migrants were warned they would be sent to a detention center if they entered Mexico again.
“My children were crying. They were afraid that the guards were going to shoot us with the big guns they were carrying,” the woman said. “… They took us to Talismán and threw us out like rubbish.”
The report says militarized migration policy has heightened the risks for migrants.
The report said the use of the National Guard to combat the flow of migrants through Mexico is “one of the main institutional legacies” of the pressure imposed by the administration of former United States president Donald Trump on Mexico. Mexico deployed troops to its southern and northern borders in 2019 after Trump threatened to impose blanket tariffs on Mexican exports to the U.S. if the Mexican government didn’t do more to stem migration.
The six NGOs, among which are also Sin Fronteras (Without Borders) and Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (Comprehensive Human Rights in Action), said the militarized migration policy pursued by the current government “has deepened the risk contexts for migrants and asylum seekers, … especially those who are more vulnerable due to reasons of gender, race and ethnicity.”
“In addition, it forces migrants to travel along clandestine routes, making them more vulnerable to different kinds of human rights violations and crimes such as enforced disappearances, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking and corruption as well as racial and ethnic discrimination, extreme climate situations and accidents,” the report said.
Bajo la Bota also said that the National Guard makes arbitrary arrests based on racial profiling and harasses people of color. “Migrant women of African descent in Mexico are exposed at all times,” said a Haitian woman.
“We can’t hide, our skin color is visible, our skin color annoys the racists. The National Guard and the INM treat us like prostitutes, make rude gestures to us, follow us when we’re walking, follow us inside stores. In stores, … we have to walk with our hands up to show them we’re not stealing,” she said. “… We’re not human beings for them, we’re trash. … We walk on large avenues, never on small streets because … the police and troops could attack us.”
The report also documented abuses committed against women at detention centers, including a case of a Honduran woman who was detained in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Guardsmen “strip women, put their fingers in their vaginas or put a gun in them,” the woman said.
The report said that 44% of the abuses occurred in Chiapas, the main entry point for migrants, most of whom intend to travel to the United States. Citing data from January, it also said that over 28,000 soldiers, National Guard members and INM agents – including almost 14,000 guardsmen – were deployed to the southern and northern borders to stop migrants, a strategy that ensures that many never reach their desired destination.
Hundreds of thousands have been detained in recent years, with many deported to their countries of origin.
The NGOs made numerous recommendations to the federal government, among which were to withdraw military forces and the National Guard from migration control tasks and to stop detaining and effectively incarcerating migrants.
They also called on the government to terminate any policies or agreements with the U.S. government that violate the human rights of migrants and refugees. The international principle of non-refoulement – which prohibits returning a person to a country where their safety or life could be threatened – must be respected, the NGOs said.
Several major media outlets have done stories on the Azulik Tulum hotel and the innovative design of its new art museum, SFER IK.
Written about in the Financial Times, Vogue, Travel and Leisure and countless other media outlets, the Azulik Tulum hotel and its new art museum SFER IK have been called “boundary pushing” and an “international melee of creativity.” SFER IK’s creator himself is quoted as saying everything in the museum is “sustained by magic.”
The Instagrammable biophilic design has caught the attention of artists and influencers around the world who are now making the trek out to a previously unknown village 40 minutes west of Tulum for a glance at what some consider Mexico’s hottest new cultural attraction.
But does it live up to the hype?
Entering through a birth canal-like tunnel lined with curved bejuco (liana) wood, you come upon a wild-looking bridge, dappled with sunlight and overlooking the towering white domes that peek their heads up above the tree line of the Maya jungle. The entrance of the SFER IK Museum at the end of the bridge is a massive circle of glass, pivoting open to reveal an expansive room, with polished walls that wrap and undulate around the room’s interior, the color of the sky before it rains.
SFER IK was imagined as a space that would force people “to feel and play in the space before interacting with art,” according to project coordinator Fernanda Ordaz.
Vining pothos plants hang from the ceiling, draping from the various trees that have been left to grow within the museum’s rooms, holes left in the ceiling for their treetops. Pools glisten below and ethereal music plays in the speakers throughout this jungle gallery.
It’s truly stunning until you have to take your shoes off.
Then the idyllic setting transforms into a test of tolerance for sheer pain and you wonder if the architect might have a masochistic streak. Built in 2018, SFER IK was imagined as a space that would force people “to feel and play in the space before interacting with art,” I was told by Fernanda Ordaz, one of the project’s coordinators via email, “a different way of approaching the aesthetic experience, one that feels more connected because is more natural.”
I’m not sure how natural it felt to gouge my feet on the knotted and shellacked rope net above a drop of about five meters or to have my soles pinched ever so painfully as I walked across the wood slate bridge connecting one area of the museum with another. But after 45 minutes of walking across a floor made of bujeco vines, my feet felt like I had walked a pilgrimage barefoot for some promise made to the Virgin. I thought I went for art, but maybe I went for penance.
The museum is the brainchild of Eduardo Neira Sterkel, better known as “Roth,” who also designed and built Tulum’s Azulik hotel – another incredibly beautiful space with mixed reviews from its guests. Roth was out of town when I visited, and so apparently was anyone else with basic knowledge of the project since my guide, who had only been on site for two months, could answer very few of my questions.
In what has been called by some the “Mayan Guggenheim,” there are two current displays. MEXX by Japanese flower artist Azuma Makoto is an eight-meter giant sculpted from vines, concrete, fiberglass and living plants that attempts to observe how living art can integrate itself into the surrounding environment over time. My guide pointed to a few of the pothos plants that were draped over the sculpture as an expression of that integration, but when I asked if they had been placed there by the museum or had grown there naturally, she demurred.
The other piece was Every Tree is a Civilising Entity by Brazilian visual artist Ernesto Neto, a combination of woven fibers, stones and other natural materials that hovers over the room like a forest canopy from outer space. The piece is a continuation of what Neto has referred to as bringing “the voice of the forest” to the viewers of his work. This piece somehow felt perfectly suited for the upended indoor-outdoor narrative of the museum.
SFER IK has been hailed in many outlets as having no carbon footprint and being one with the surrounding nature, but there seemed to me some conspicuous incongruencies: while the area’s zapote trees were preserved during the building process and no machines were used in the construction, water was being continuously pumped into the museum’s dozens of low-lying pools, the pothos plants that decorated the walls and draped into the space are not endemic to the area and the tropical plants around the grounds were being watered by gardeners. When I probed a little further for ecofriendly aspects to the project – thinking I must have missed solar energy or water recycling or even composting – I was told just that the building materials used to make the structures were organic – an argument for concrete I’ve never heard before – and that they worked with the local Maya community on the construction.
The birth canal-like tunnel you use to enter the museum.
This “City of Arts,” as it is called by its residents, includes four workshops where architects, designers and a few locals – although the percentage of that last group was not forthcoming from my guide – make pieces for the museum’s restaurant and grounds as well as the Tulum Azulik hotel. The beauty of those decorative pieces was undeniable – the intricate macrame wall hangings, or the one-of-a-kind ceramic pieces used in the restaurant, but access to the workshops is limited to the folks who work there and is not open to the public. My guide told me that there were no artist residences, but it was later confirmed that they do host artists three or four times a year.
The restaurant of the museum, Jungle Cuisine, is just as lovely as the museum itself, with small, bubbling pools, more draping vines and bossa nova covers of pop songs playing over the loudspeaker. The cuisine is supposedly based around traditional ingredients and regional cooking techniques, but I’ll never know since I was also told that I couldn’t eat there. Turns out that even if you have traveled over an hour and the 25-odd tables are empty — and especially if you are a lowly reporter — you’ll need a reservation.
When, hot and sweaty, I suggested that I might then just have a drink before heading back to Tulum in the midday broil, I was handed a bottle of water and scooted out the door.
On the way back into Francisco Uh May, the small town where the museum is located, I asked my motorcycle taxi driver what the locals thought of the museum. He said they were content – it had brought some jobs and raised the value of everyone’s land around it. But had he or anyone he knew ever been inside the museum? I asked, No, was the reply. As far as community involvement, Ordaz says there is an art school for community kids that happens once a week, but no one mentioned that during my visit.
Aesthetically speaking, the hype surrounding the SFER IK Museum is understandable; there is no denying that its beauty and its limited art collection is visually stunning. But if you go to SFER IK looking for something more – an institution that’s integrated into the local community, an exemplar of ecoconscious luxury or a bastion of bohemian hospitality – I’m afraid you might be disappointed.
Lydia Carey is a freelance writer and translator based out of Mexico City. She has been published widely both online and in print, writing about Mexico for over a decade. She lives a double life as a local tour guide and is the author of Mexico City Streets: La Roma. Follow her urban adventures on Instagram and see more of her work at www.mexicocitystreets.com.
A monarch butterfly at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán. Natalia Gurieva/Shutterstock
The number of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico increased 35% last winter, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the National Commission of Natural Protected Areas (Conanp).
Monarchs, which migrate to Mexican annually from Canada and the United States, covered an area of 2.84 hectares in the pine and fir forests of México state and Michoacán in December, an increase of 0.74 hectares compared to the same month of 2020.
The WWF and Conanp said in a report that the increase was mainly due to repopulation efforts in the southern United States.
Jorge Rickards, general director of WWF México, said the increase was good news but highlighted that butterfly numbers were still well below those recorded three years ago.
“In 2018–19 the area the butterflies occupied to hibernate was 6.05 hectares, which indicates that we have to continue working to maintain this [upward] trend and strengthen the protection measures … [in] Mexico, the United States and Canada,” he told a press conference.
“Monarchs are important pollinators, and their migratory journey encourages reproduction … of flowering plants, which benefits other species … and contributes to the production of food for human consumption,” Rickards said.
The butterflies formed a total of 10 colonies in Mexico last winter, five in México state and five in Michoacán. Six were in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, an almost 60,000-hectare UNESCO World Heritage site that straddles the two states.
Some 186,000 people visited four different sanctuaries to observe the butterflies, Conanp said in a statement.
Environment Minister María Luisa Albores noted that a presidential decree ordering the elimination of glyphosate – a controversial herbicide – by 2024 will benefit the monarch butterflies that migrate annually to Mexico. The herbicide kills milkweed, the plant on which monarch butterflies lay their eggs, and the caterpillars eat milkweed leaves.
Illegal logging, a huge problem in Mexico, and climate change also pose a threat to monarch butterflies, which according to a Purépecha legend are the souls of dead children returning to their families.
Electricity customers owed the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) a record high of almost 71 billion pesos (US $3.6 billion) at the end of 2021, an increase of almost 28% in the space of two years.
Bad debts – bills still not paid 30 days after the payment cutoff date – totaled 70.97 billion pesos at the end of last year.
The figure is included in the CFE’s 2021 report, which was submitted to Congress earlier this month. It is almost 15.4 billion pesos, or 27.7%, higher than the bad debt total at the end of 2019.
Municipal, state and federal authorities are among the biggest debtors, according to the CFE report.
Not even cutting off municipal wells in 2020, which provoked protests, persuaded Ecatepec, México state, to pay off its CFE debt.
According to the most recent data, the government of Ecatepec, México state, owes over 1.11 billion pesos to the utility, more than any other municipality. The next biggest municipal debtors are Acapulco, Guerrero; Ixtapaluca, México state; Texcoco, México state; and Chicoloapan, México state.
Household and commercial customers also owe large amounts of money to the state-owned utility.
The CFE noted that many customers in Tabasco, México state, Chiapas and Mexico City refuse to pay their bills as they continue to engage in civil resistance against the company.
A scheme in Tabasco that aimed to get electricity customers to start paying their bills by canceling their longstanding debt fell well short of its goal, according to data published late last year, with only one-third of the targeted customers signing up for the debt forgiveness program.
The increase in the value of unpaid bills has occurred despite the CFE seeking to encourage payment via a range of schemes.
The pace with which the utility’s bad debt has grown during the current government is much faster than that seen when former president Enrique Peña Nieto was in office between 2012 and 2018. During his entire six-year term, the company’s bad debt grew by only 7.7%, or just over 3.4 billion pesos.
An explosion in Nopala, Hidalgo, in January caused by fuel theft from a Pemex pipeline.
The federal government has drastically reduced fuel theft since it took office in late 2018, but the crime still cost the state oil company Pemex a significant amount of money over the past three years and is now on the rise again.
Information obtained by the newspaper Milenio via freedom of information requests showed that fuel theft cost Pemex 2.46 billion pesos (US $123.6 million) between 2019 and 2021. The figure represents a loss of just under 2.25 million pesos (almost US $112,000) per day in the three-year period.
While the loss over the past three years is substantial, it is in fact a 98% decrease compared to that incurred by Pemex in the final three years of the government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto. Pemex said in a 2019 report that fuel theft cost the company 147.2 billion pesos (US $7.4 billion at today’s exchange rate) between 2016 and 2018.
The huge decrease in losses emphasizes the vast size of the fuel theft problem inherited by the current government. While AMLO’s administration has succeeded in reducing its incidence compared to the final years of the Peña Nieto government, data shows that illegal taps on state-owned pipelines increased by 14.6% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period in 2021.
Fuel theft cost Pemex 98% less in losses during AMLO’s administration than in the final three years of former President Enrique Peña Nieto’s. Government of Mexico
Authorities detected 3,199 taps between January and March, an increase of 409 compared to the first quarter of 2021.
Just over 45% of the total – 1,454 – were detected in Hidalgo, where an explosion on a tapped pipeline killed almost 140 people in 2019. Pipeline taps in the state increased 17% annually in the first quarter.
México state and Puebla ranked second and third, respectively, for pipeline taps in the first three months of the year with 477 in the former state and 267 in the latter.
Cuatepec de Hinojosa, a Hidalgo municipality on that state’s border with Puebla, is currently Mexico’s fuel theft capital with more taps detected there than in any other municipality.
Despite the recent increase in taps, Security Minister Rosa Icela Rodríguez said Monday that the government is achieving “encouraging results” in its ongoing fight against fuel theft.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s morning press conference, she highlighted that 72,000 barrels of fuel were stolen every day when the government took office, while the figure for April was 6,700 barrels per day (bpd), a reduction of over 90%. The savings generated by the government’s military-led crackdown on fuel theft between December 2018 and April 2022 are estimated to be just over 206 billion pesos (US $10.4 billion), Rodríguez said.
She presented additional data that showed that the volume of fuel stolen has recently increased. The figure rose to 5,800 bpd in March from 4,500 bpd in February before jumping 15.5% in the space of a month to 6,700 bpd in April.
The International Crisis Group, an NGO, warned earlier this year that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could make fuel theft more lucrative and prevalent in Mexico, but it was unclear whether the recent spike was related to that conflict.
A soldier in Hidalgo, part of a deployment of soldiers guarding 327 kilometers of pipelines across the state.
National Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval told López Obrador’s Monday press conference that the military is carrying out operations in rural and urban areas to detect illegal taps on pipelines.
“The deployment has been strengthened with a greater number of elements,” he said, adding that military aircraft support the efforts.
Sandoval also said that the military and the National Guard conduct operations to seize stolen fuel. Security forces check the documentation of tanker trucks traveling on the nation’s highways and carry out “administrative visits” to gas stations, he said.
The army chief explained that soldiers monitor the flow of fuel through the nation’s pipelines from Pemex headquarters in Mexico City to detect illegal taps and highlighted that the military has a coordinating center in Hidalgo.
The overarching aim, he said, is to strengthen the anti-fuel theft strategy in order to reduce the incidence of a crime that has once again begun to grow.
Almost 850 pipeline taps were detected and repaired over the past month while 761,000 liters of stolen fuel were recovered, data shows. In the same period, authorities seized 135 vehicles and six properties used by fuel thieves and detained 31 people.
