The suspension was lifted at the request of the National Tourism Promotion Fund, which is managing the entire US $10 billion Maya Train project. Tren Maya/Twitter
A judge has revoked a suspension order against construction of the Cancún-Playa del Carmen section of the Maya Train railroad, allowing the federal government to proceed with the project.
Work on the northern stretch of section 5 of the 1,500-kilometer railroad (Tramo 5 Norte) stopped in August after the nongovernmental organization the National Council of Strategic Litigation successfully challenged the project in court, on the grounds that an environmental impact statement (EIS) hadn’t been completed and approved.
On Tuesday, Mérida-based federal judge Adrián Fernando Novelo Pérez lifted the suspension order he issued early last month because the federal Environment Ministry has now approved the EIS for Tramo 5 Norte.
His ruling came in response to an application to lift the suspension filed by the National Tourism Promotion Fund, which is managing the entire US $10 billion Maya Train project.
President López Obrador mentioned the decision at his regular news conference on Wednesday, declaring that “all the injunctions” on the government train project have been overturned — although a suspension order against the controversial Playa del Carmen-Tulum section of the railroad, the southern stretch of section 5, still stands.
“The pseudoenvironmentalists were wrong,” he said, using a term with which he frequently derides opponents of the Maya Train.
López Obrador also said he would travel to Mexico’s southeast every three weeks to inspect progress on his signature infrastructure project, which is slated to begin operations at the end of 2023.
Construction of the railroad – which will run through Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Chiapas – is “historic,” he said, asserting that only former president Porfirio Díaz – who ruled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – had done something similar.
However, under Diáz, railroads were built by foreign companies, López Obrador said, whereas Mexican firms are working on the Maya Train project.
“This is a passenger and freight railroad, for tourism, to connect all the archaeological areas, … that is being built with the participation of Mexican companies without [taking out] loans, with money from the budget that was previously stolen but which now … [allows] us to invest in this,” he said.
The military is being placed into more and more everyday situations in the name of public safety, but many Mexicans don't seem too upset about it, the writer notes. file photo
The administration’s move to hand over control of virtually all federal law enforcement to the military could determine what kind of country we live in for the foreseeable future.
There’s nothing clandestine about the move; it’s all happening right out in the open, and the press coverage has been thorough. Yet you can sum up the prevailing public reaction in one word: meh. And that’s not really much of a word.
The indifference is understandable. People long ago lost confidence in their government’s ability to tackle crime after years of failed actions, counterproductive actions and inaction.
Replacing the federales with Army guys and their cooler uniforms and bigger guns seems aimed at reclaiming some of that lost cred. Will it?
Not likely, the public would say. Same dog, different fleas.
There’s nothing new about soldiers taking over federal law enforcement duties. The origin of this militarization is usually traced to December 2006, when the newly installed president, Felipe Calderón, sent the armed forces after the drug cartels in his home state of Michoacán, setting the tone for his policy by donning a green cap and army jacket (invariably depicted by political cartoonists as several sizes too big for him) for photo ops.
Former president Felipe Calderón in military garb in 2006.
But the true genesis may have been a decade earlier, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of using the military for public security. With that constitutional green light, Calderón’s strategy, originally billed as a temporary foray into one state has mission-creeped its way into a permanent nationwide military presence.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has doubled down on militarization. The president dissolved the civilian Federal Police and replaced it with a National Guard that was quickly absorbed into the armed forces. Hence, there will be no active civilian-controlled law enforcement elements at the federal level. Just state and local cops. All the rest is military.
This is where the public might want to re-think its ho-hum attitude. The dog may be the same but the fleas have multiplied and changed their personalities.
We’re not just talking here about flamboyant shootouts with narcos. The soldier/cops are authorized to carry out the everyday actions you associate with police work. The political analyst and El Universal columnist Maite Azuela recently listed some of them:
They can handle complaints from individuals. They can investigate you. They can gather intelligence via the internet without identifying themselves. They can wiretap you. They can search your home. They can stop you for infractions just like traffic cops. In other words, opportunities for abuse or corruption are not rare.
Of course, state and local law enforcement can do those things as well. For that matter, so could the now-defunct Federal Police. But those institutions are held accountable for their actions, at least in theory. The Army and Navy are much more powerful and relatively unchecked.
Still, if there’s one thing everyone in Mexico agrees on, it’s the need to do something about runaway violent crime, narco-generated or otherwise. The question is whether the military is the right agent for the task.
Toward that end, AMLO is not only expanding the military’s job specs to include public security along with national security, but he’s expanding its size as well. The National Guard number 118,000 today and in combination with the armed forces, 148,537 military personnel were deployed from December 2021 to January 2022.
That’s a rather hefty call-up for a country that’s not at war, faces no imminent foreign threat, has no plans to invade Ukraine, and isn’t expecting an interplanetary alien invasion any time soon. The extra boots on the ground are for domestic use.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed, including here at the Mexico News Daily, that AMLO campaigned for the presidency as a harsh critic of the very militarization he is now endorsing. To be fair, what the press and political opponents love to jump on as flip-flopping is not always a sin. If new evidence emerges, or the situation changes, or a convincing counter-argument is made, wouldn’t it be irresponsible not to change course? Witness former U.S. President Barack Obama on gay marriage and marijuana decriminalization.
In this case, however, AMLO voters have a right to feel betrayed that they voted for militarization without knowing it. Many surely thought they were voting against it. Also, it’s interesting to note that the idea of an all-powerful Mexican Army can seem more appealing once you find yourself in charge of said Army.
The argument in favor of militarization is fairly simple. The public security crisis is big and urgent, and the armed forces are the biggest and strongest counterforce we’ve got. But the assumption that the armed forces are our best bet for getting crime under control is just that— an assumption. There are some good reasons to doubt it.
Other than the above-mentioned likelihood of abuse, the obvious objection is that soldiers are trained for war, not police work. Their default logic favors force, something police officers are supposed to try their best to avoid. Taken to extremes, innocent victims might be considered mere collateral damage in an effort to defeat an enemy. That’s not most people’s idea of public security.
High-value target operations, such as locating and moving in on a drug lord, fall within the military’s comfort zone (if “comfort” is the word). But most police tasks are mundane, such as urban patrols, investigations, and administrative work. They’re not good at these things and there’s plenty of evidence indicating that they don’t like doing them. They especially don’t like dealing with state and local police.
With apologies to W.S. Gilbert, when constabulary duty’s to be done, a soldier’s lot is not a happy one.
Perhaps the most relevant critique of militarization is that it detracts from the true solution to the crime problem, which is to put in place an efficient, equitable, smoothly operating and transparent criminal justice system along with well-trained, professional and incorruptible law enforcement officers at all levels of government. Unfortunately, that train has left the station, empty.
But who knows? Maybe by the end of AMLO’s term we’ll be pleasantly surprised at the progress in crime reduction, marked not only by happier statistics but also by concrete evidence, such as stores once shuttered by extortion threats opening up again, markedly reduced impunity in prosecuting crimes, and most important, by residents reporting that they honestly feel safer than before.
We probably shouldn’t hold our breaths on all that. Maybe the best we can hope for is that this risky plan doesn’t make things worse.
Kelly Arthur Garrett has been writing from Mexico since 1992. He lives in San Luis Potosí.
The number of firearms citizens turned into authorities under buyback and amnesty schemes declined significantly in the first three years of the current government compared to the same period of its predecessor, official data shows.
Via a freedom of information request, the newspaper El Universal obtained federal government data that showed that 9,975 guns were surrendered to the army and destroyed between 2019 and 2021, an 86% decline compared to the three-year period between 2013 and 2015, when 71,785 firearms were turned in by citizens.
The decline had begun by the second half of former president Enrique Peña Nieto’s six-year term and continued after President López Obrador took office. The number of firearms surrendered in the past three years is 55% lower than the 22,355 turned in between 2016 and 2018. Just 1,167 were handed in last year, compared to more than 31,000 in 2013.
Under different programs, citizens have been able to exchange firearms for cash, vouchers, domestic appliances and furniture. Prices paid range from less than 200 pesos (about US $10) to more than 16,000 pesos (almost US $800) depending on the kind of weapon.
Surrendered guns are destroyed by military personnel. Twitter: SedenaMX
While the number of guns surrendered between 2019 and 2021 declined 86% compared to the first three years of Peña Nieto’s term, the number of homicides committed with firearms increased 120% from 27,632 between 2013 and 2015 to 60,718 in the 36 months to the end of December 2021.
The inference is that people haven’t turned in weapons in great numbers in the last three years because they are worried about the high levels of gun violence and want to be able to protect themselves if need be.
José Andrés Sumano Rodríguez, an academic at the College of the Northern border who researches violence, told El Universal that people in some parts of the country decide to get a gun to protect their family and assets because the government’s security strategy isn’t working.
Gun ownership is legal in Mexico, but firearms can only be legally bought at one army-run store in Mexico City. They are, however, widely available on the black market. A 2021 study concluded there were firearms in at least 1.89 million Mexican homes, a figure that represents 5.5% of all households in the country.
The purpose of gun buyback programs is ultimately to reduce violence, but Sumano says they firearms surrendered in Mexico are “not the rifles or pistols” generally used in homicides.
Citizens generally hand in guns that are very old or don’t work, he said. “[The purpose of] these kinds of programs is to disarm people, but they haven’t yielded the expected results,” Sumano said. “We’re not going to find a Barrett rifle or an AK-47” among the weapons turned in, he added.
The newspaper Milenio, which also obtained data on surrendered firearms, reported that very few guns have been handed in recent years in highly violent states such as Baja California, Guerrero and Guanajuato. The numbers have been much higher in Mexico City, although there was a reduction there in 2020 and again in 2021.
A wave sloshes between rock walls at the Death Valley National Park in Nevada, caused by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake on Sept. 19 in Michoacán. Ambre Chaudoin/NPS
The powerful earthquake that rocked central Mexico on September 19 caused a phenomenon dubbed a “desert tsunami” almost 3,000 kilometers north of the epicenter in the U.S. state of Nevada.
The 7.7 magnitude quake triggered a seiche – a standing wave in an enclosed or partially enclosed body of water – in a pool of water in a Death Valley National Park cave.
Water in an Amargosa Valley pool of water known as Devils Hole started sloshing around the cave about five minutes after the temblor occurred.
“In a surprising quirk of geology, Monday’s … earthquake in Mexico triggered four-foot-tall waves in Devils Hole,” the United States National Park Service (NPS) said in a statement.
“… Monday’s waves, technically known as a seiche, stirred the sediment and rocks on the shallow shelf, also removing much of the algae growth. In the short term, this reduces food available to the pupfish.”
Ambre Chaudoin, a biological science technician, was at Devils Hole when the “desert tsunami” occurred and filmed the phenomenon, which lasted about 30 minutes. “This is a big earthquake, wherever it is,” she said as she filmed.
The NPS says on its website that Devils Holes is “an unusual indicator of seismic activity around the world.”
“Large earthquakes as far away as Japan, Indonesia and Chile have caused the water to ‘slosh’ in Devils Hole like water in a bathtub. Waves may splash as high as two meters up the walls,” it adds.
Apart from the September 19 seiche, the most recent Devils Hole “desert tsunami” occurred in July 2019 when a 7.1. magnitude earthquake struck near Ridgecrest, California.
From one of the opening shots of the music video for "Hold Me Closer," by Britney Spears and Elton John, featuring the colorful buildings of Ecatepec, México state, as a backdrop. Photos: UnderWonder Content
Pop music icons Elton John and Britney Spears may be the famous names behind a new musical collaboration, but for Mexicans, the star of the song’s newly released music video is Mexico City.
The colorful urbanscape of the nation’s capital — as well as that of México state — is on full display in the newly released video for “Hold me Closer,” a musical collaboration between the U.S. pop star and the British musical veteran that features dancers in flowing, vibrantly colored outfits undulating throughout, with various recognizable locations from the two federal entities in the background.
Mexico City residents were thrilled to see their city represented in the video, and none more so than the city’s mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who tweeted, “Without a doubt, we are the #CityThatHasEverything. Thanks to Britney Spears and Elton John for choosing us.”
Among the images included in the 3-minute, 25-second video are that of Mexico City’s Cablebus, passing by a swatch of colorful house facades; the house and studio of influential architect Luis Barragán; and another Barragán project — Los Clubes, an upscale horse ranch in México state whose massive pink walls are featured in some scenes.
Mexico City’s Cablebus, a relatively new addition to the capital, features in the opening shot of the video.
Also featured is architect Agustín Hernández’s Praxis House, a hypermodern structure that floats out above a precipitous drop in Bosques de Las Lomas, and El Nido de Quetzalcóatl, a complex full of organic lines and fantastical colors in México state designed in 2000 by Javier Senosiain. (Visitors to the city can rent it on Airbnb).
The video was directed by Tanu Muino, a Ukrainian who has worked with other pop musicians such as Harry Styles and Cardi B. Muino said that the video was meant to represent intimacy within reigning chaos.
“From the beginning of this video, I knew there was a lot of excited expectation from the audience and the fans. With that responsibility in mind, I had to do something different and unexpected. The dancing had to be innovative and attention-getting and make Elton and Britney proud,” Muino said.
The Elton-Britney collaboration isn’t the only music video that offers a taste of Mexico’s massive, beautiful metropolis: other famous music videos filmed with the city as a backdrop include two by Coldplay, “A Head Full of Dreams” and the more recent “Humankind,” as well as “Heavy Seas of Love” by Damon Albarn and Feist’s “The Bad in Each Other.”
The initiative is just one part of a comprehensive campaign by Nuevo León activists to get the state's laws in line with a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that criminalizing abortion is illegal. File photo
Within the context of International Safe Abortion Day, Nuevo León activists presented an initiative calling on state congressional leaders to decriminalize abortion.
Activist groups, including the Group for Information on Reproduction Choice (GIRE), are also filing a lawsuit in the local courts demanding the reform of state law to align with a 2021 Supreme Court ruling that criminalizing abortion was unconstitutional.
Their action comes after a November decision by local courts, which provided pro-choice activists with a win in the case of a Nuevo León woman. The ruling stated that her rights to a future abortion would be protected.
Activists say that such individual cases are important but that the momentum around this issue has meant that they are bringing collective suits for all women of the state and not solely on a case-by-case basis.
“We are filing legal action as organizations, collectives, and associations with the objective that if we win — which we hope we will — that abortion as a crime will be declared invalid in the entire state … that we might achieve [the lawś] application to everyone in the state,” said Melissa Ayala, a lawyer for GIRE.
The class-action suits are also fighting for access to abortion through federal health services like IMSS and ISSTE, who activists say, even in states that protect abortion, often will not provide them for their clients.
A group of 11 senators from across the political spectrum are currently working on proposed changes to the country’s General Health Law that would guarantee access to all reproductive services in federal entities.
Legal actions such as these are also being brought by groups in Aguascalientes, Puebla, Chihuahua, Chiapas, San Luis Potosí, Morelos, Jalisco, Sonora, and Querétaro. If they succeed, they will join Mexico City, Oaxaca, Hidalgo, Veracruz, Baja California, Colima, Sinaloa, Guerrero and Baja California Sur in legalizing abortion, meaning two-thirds of Mexico’s states will have at least some protections of women’s right to choose.
Today, on International Safe Abortion Day, citizens will march across the country in favor of legal and safe abortions for Mexico’s residents. Protests are planned in Mexico City, Toluca, Pachuca, and Guanajuato among many other locations.
Mexican millionaire Martín Mobarak burned this untitled drawing by Frida Kahlo in July in Miami in order to digitize it and sell 10,0000 digitized copies. Frida.nft
A Mexican-American businessman’s decision to burn a valuable Frida Kahlo artwork to promote 10,000 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) he created from it has sparked controversy and caught the eye of Mexican authorities.
Martin Mobarak, CEO and founder of Frida.NFT, destroyed Kahlo’s untitled work, known as Fantasmones siniestros, by setting it on fire at an extravagant event in Miami in July.
The piece – which was taken from the Mexican artist’s diary and had been valued at more than US $10 million, according to the Frida.NFT website – had already been digitalized in the form of 10,000 NFTs – records on a blockchain that are associated with digital or physical assets, according to Wikipedia.
The Frida.NFT website says “the painting was permanently transitioned into the metaverse on July 30th, 2022.”
Video footage of the controversial burning of the Kahlo drawing in Miami in July.
Each Fantasmones siniestros NFT costs three Ethereum – a cryptocurrency worth about US $1,300 at midday Wednesday.
“Display a piece of history in your home. A limited 10,000 NFTs will circulate as the only authentic connection to the masterpiece Fantasmones siniestros by Frida Kahlo,” says a message on the Frida.NFT website, which also has a video of the artwork being burned and a link to a certificate of authenticity.
“… The holders will all receive the highest-resolution, PNG format of the front and back of the art piece. They will also receive a write-up explaining the story around the piece, and a copy of the certificate of authenticity.”
The website also says that a portion of the proceeds of NFT sales will go to a range of organizations including the Autism Society and Mexico City’s Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts), an asset of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL).
Mobarak bought the original drawing, seen here, from a New York art gallery. It was ripped from one of Kahlo’s diaries. Frida.nft
However, the institute rejected that claim in a statement published Tuesday and noted that Kahlo’s entire oeuvre is considered an “artistic monument” in accordance with the Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic and Historic Monuments and Areas.
“In Mexico the deliberate destruction of an artistic monument constitutes a crime in terms of” that law, INBAL said.
It said that “all the necessary information is currently being gathered” in order to “establish with certainty” that the artwork destroyed by Mobarak was in fact an original work and not a copy he “used for commercial purposes.”
INBAL also said that it “hasn’t issued authorization for reproduction” of Fantasmones siniestros. The Associated Press reported that INBAL’s authorization “would be necessary” for the creation of NFTs from the artwork.
Hilda Trujillo, a Frida Kahlo art expert, proposed a chemical analysis of the ashes of the artwork “to see if it’s an original work.” Frida.nft
Numerous social media users condemned the burning of the piece, whose reverse side features the words Cromóforo (chromophore) and Auxocromo (Auxochrome), which Kahlo used as nicknames for herself and husband Diego Rivera.
“Just watched some rich asshole burn a Frida Kahlo painting in order to ‘convert’ it to an NFT and I think I may be a communist now,” wrote one Twitter user the day after Fantasmones siniestros was destroyed.
“A man (a multimillionaire as a relevant fact) has decided to burn a Frida Kahlo work to make NFTs from it and sell them. His excuse? All the benefits will be for children in need. I’m very tired of [Mexican] heritage being played with in this way,” said another Twitter user.
Hilda Trujillo, a Frida Kahlo art expert, told the newspaper Excélsior that the artwork is not as valuable as Mobarak claims because it’s just “a page torn out of [Frida’s] diary.”
The Mexican Institute of Fine Arts says that Kahlo’s entire oeuvre is considered a national monument and that deliberate destruction of such a monument is a crime in Mexico. UNAM
She proposed a chemical analysis of the ashes of the artwork “to see if it’s an original work.”
“The ashes can be compared with the paper of Frida’s diary, which is in the Casa Azul,” Trujillo said, referring to the Frida Kahlo Museum in the Mexico City neighborhood of Coyoacán. “It would be interesting.”
Issued by Andrés Siegel, the authentication certificate says the artwork was completed circa 1945 and “would have been located between page 42 and 43 of the diary according to [art historian] Luis Martin Lozano’s study of this work.”
“It is to my best opinion and knowledge after having reviewed the piece to the best of my ability through ocular means that this work corresponds to the characteristics in style and materials used by Frida Kahlo in her diary housed in La Casa Azul in Coyoacán, Mexico,” wrote Siegel, described by Frida NFT as a “top Frida Kahlo curator.”
Mobarak – who said in an interview that he grew up near the Casa Azul (formerly the home of Kahlo and Rivera) – reportedly purchased the artwork in 2015 from Mary-Anne Martin Fine Art in New York. Domiciled in The Bahamas, Frida.NFT purports to create “the bridge between the traditional art world and the expanding potential of Web 3.0.”
“This community-driven initiative has a vision to introduce Frida’s work into the metaverse and leverage her powerful likeness to bring together a community of collectors, creators and art lovers on a mission to merge the traditional art world with the digital art world’s expanding potential and immortalize humanity’s story,” the website says.
It also says that Mobarak is committed to charitable causes, including the provision of support for “parents of children with debilitating diseases.”
The NFT creator, the website asserts, is an “art alchemist transforming physical art into digital gold” and a “wearer of many hats, … a public speaker, an accomplished businessman, and a passionate advocate for charities that improve children’s health.”
The Sheinbaum administration has been quietly increasing Mexico's natural gas storage capacity. (Depositphotos/Archive)
The federal government is planning to build a US $4–$5 billion natural gas processing plant in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz, from where the fuel will be shipped to Europe, President López Obrador said Tuesday.
“We’re thinking about creating a liquefaction plant in Coatzacoalcos,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
“It’s a plant that processes gas, freezes it in order to be able to transport it in ships to Europe. The gas arrives there frozen, and it’s regasified at another plant. Now that there is a lack of gas in Europe, we have this possibility,” López Obrador said.
He said that the government already has land for the project and will seek private sector involvement.
President López Obrador’s announcement comes a week after he reportedly discussed Mexico stepping up cooperation on liquid gas with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Germany is facing shortages due to a squeeze on supplies from Russia. Presidencia
Mexico doesn’t currently export LNG commercially, but López Obrador said that the supply for the proposed plant would be “guaranteed” as the country has “sufficient reserves of oil and gas.”
He didn’t say when construction of the plant might begin or when it would start exporting gas to Europe, which faces a supply squeeze as Russia has progressively cut off access to the fuel via pipeline. López Obrador did, however, say that construction of the plant and other proposed infrastructure projects would create a lot of jobs.
While LNG isn’t yet exported from Mexico, some private companies are preparing to do so. According to experts cited by the El Economista newspaper, Energía Costa Azul, a subsidiary of U.S. energy company Sempra, is the closest to commencing exports.
The Veracruz port city’s dominant economic sector is petrochemicals. deposit photos
It operates an LNG storage and regasification terminal in Ensenada, Baja California, and supplies gas to power plants and other industries in that state.
A masked dancer from Tlacoyalco, Puebla, gets ready to proceed through the streets of Atlixco. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
Dancers from the eleven ethnographic regions and 17 Puebla towns performed in the 57th Atlixcáyotl traditional dance festival on Sunday in Atlixco, Puebla. The 57-year-old festival, the brainchild of American expat Raymond Harvey Estage Noel, was founded in 1965. Estage was inspired by seeing Oaxaca’s Guelaguetza festival.
In 1996, the state declared the Alixcáyotl festival part of the cultural patrimony of the state of Puebla.
While the main event takes place on the last Sunday in September, the opening on Saturday saw people in elaborate costumes gathering a couple of blocks from Atlixco’s zócalo to dance their way through the streets to Saint Michael’s Chapel, which sits atop a hill of the same name. In addition to the dancers, two men carried a table ladened with flowers and a statue of the saint.
On Sunday, several thousand people gathered in the Plaza de la Danza (Plaza of the Dance) to watch the performances. Before the dances began, there were a slew of introductions, including of Puebla Governor Miguel Barbosa Huerta. They were all acknowledged with polite applause. But when Estage — known to most as Cayuqui — was introduced, the crowd broke into loud applause and chanted his name. Although 89 years old and somewhat frail, he made it once again to the festival he helped create and once again proved to be a crowd favorite.
Cayuqui Estage Noel, an expat from Buffalo, New York, who's lived in Mexico since 1954, is a beloved figure in Atlixco, Puebla, where he created the Huei Atlixcáyotl festival in 1965 to showcase Puebla's traditions. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
The Huei Atlixcáyotl festival, Puebla’s huge event of traditional dance that takes place every September in Atlixco, has roots in the pre-Hispanic Nahuatl peoples of the area, but it wouldn’t exist today if not for a New Yorker.
To say Cayuqui Estage Noel has had an interesting and peripatetic life would be a gross understatement. Born Raymond Harvey Estage Noel in Buffalo, he has lived in Mexico since 1954, and except for a couple of trips to New York to earn money and a few others to Guatemala, he’s never left, bouncing between Atlixco and Oaxaca, Campeche and other parts of Puebla.
He’s studied dance, music, acting and anthropology — the latter subject with Margaret Mead — taught any number of topics, directed plays, researched regional dances. Recently, he was named a “Tesoro Humano Vivo” (Living Human Treasure) by the municipal government in Atlixco for his role in bringing the festival into existence in 1965.
After seeing the traditional Guelaguetza festival in Oaxaca, he was inspired to create a venue for Puebla’s traditional dance. He worked with representatives of Atlixco to arrange the city’s first Atlixcáyotl by visiting surrounding villages and convincing locals to perform in the event he was helping arrange.
Dancers from Ixtepec, Puebla, participating this past Sunday at the Atlixcáyotl festival in Atlixco, Puebla.
The festival, which the state government named in 1996 as part of Puebla’s cultural patrimony, is a popular Atlixco event that was just celebrated again this past Sunday for another year. While the state government spells the event as the Huey Atlixacáyotl, and still others the Hue Hue, as a founder of the event, Estage insists that it should be spelled Huei Atlixcáyotl.
Estage, who’s studied dance, music, acting and anthropology — the latter subject with Margaret Mead — taught any number of topics, directed plays, and researched regional dances, was recently named a tesoro humano vivo (living human treasure) by Atlixco’s municipal government.
But he’s probably best known in Mexico for organizing the festival.
Ironically, Estage originally had no intention of staying in Atlixco the first time he saw it.
“I was there for 20 minutes,” he said. “I had no interest in coming to Mexico. Guatemala was my goal. The information about Mexico was that it was [filled with] vaqueros (cowboys) and that wasn’t very interesting. But Guatemala, with Indians in their costumes, cities lost in the jungles — that interested me. I wanted to go to the jungle.”
In fact, Guatemala was where he got the name Cayuqui: he was trying to sell a boat to some locals, and his Spanish was pretty much nonexistent at the time, so they thought he’d said, “Yo soy Cayuqui,” (I’m Cayuqui). Later, when he became a Mexican citizen, he dropped his first two given names and replaced them with Cayuqui.
During his time in Guatemala, on a trip to Guatemala city, he met a young man from Atlixco who invited him to visit. That second trip changed his mind, and he made Atlixco his home.
“I rented a house up on the hill,” he said. “Ten pesos a month. No running water, no electricity, no bathroom, but I didn’t care. I was enthralled with living in Mexico. I bought an oil lamp; I thought it was very romantic, exciting. I bought my water from an old man who brought two oil cans of water, 50 centavos each one, on the back of his donkey. I had the corn field for my bathroom.”
A woman from Cosamaloapan, Puebla takes a quiet moment at Sunday’s festivities.
On a trip back to New York to earn money, Estage’s house in Atlixco was ransacked, and so he moved to another house, a decision that would be fateful.
“I rented a room. An old woman who had been in the [Mexican] Revolution — she cooked for [Álvaro] Obregón, knew [revolutionary] Pancho Villa — she told me about the customs of old Atlixco, the dress, which I used later for the Atlixcáyotl.”
Then he visited Oaxaca, another fateful decision.
“I saw the Guelaguetza. I said, ‘Wow. this is incredible that these people exist. We have nothing this fabulous in Puebla.’”
In the Guelaguetza, dancers from all over the state of Oaxaca converge on the city of Oaxaca in July. When he started visiting villages around the state, he saw something very different. “The dances in the villages were much more interesting than what was in the Guelaguetza. I became dissatisfied with the Guelaguetza, but it inspired me to start the Atlixcáyotl.”
He returned to Atlixco and started talking with people in the nearby villages.
“No one in Atlixco was interested in going [there],” he said. “You have to sleep on straw mats, get bitten by fleas. No one would go to the villages. To this day, there are people who have gone to Disneyland, they go to east L.A., New York, but they don’t know the villages around here.”
But Estage felt right at home. And on December 20, 1965, he brought the dancers he’d met in the villages to Atlixco for the first iteration of the festival.
Estage says moving to Mexico was the best decision of his life.
Depending on the source, Atlixcáyotl is Nahuatl for either “the Great Fiesta of Atlixco,” or “the Tradition of Atlixco.” “We have about 17 or 18 groups that perform,” Estage said, “and each group has at least 20 people — between 20 and 40.”
The dances aren’t truly pre-Hispanic, he is careful to point out. “There’s nothing pre-Hispanic today except in the museums. Many [dances] have pre-Hispanic roots, but they are influenced by European music and dance.”
These days, he lives part of the time in Campeche, in a Mayan village, in a little house made of sticks and mud and with a dirt floor and a palm roof — a place in which he’s perfectly content. He was a little vague on his role in the Atlixco festival this year, saying, “I sneak in when they let me.”
But he is adamant about what the Atlixcáyotl should be. “Atlixcáyotl must remain a family fiesta, never an event.” In Oaxaca, he said, “They built a roof over the Guelaguetza. That ruined it.”
And after all these years, he revels in the informality the event still has. “If a dog goes on stage, they shoo it off,” he said. “Dogs are part of our culture. To see a dog on stage to me is something very good.”
He’s lived in Mexico now for almost 70 years, and he didn’t hesitate when asked what it was that attracted him to — and keeps him in — Mexico. “The people,” he said. “They’re marvelous. So warm and friendly and interesting. And so funny. Great sense of humor. I think they’re the happiest people in the world. The best decision of my life was to leave the United States and live here.”
Estage says he has everything he needs in Mexico.
“We don’t have money, but you don’t need money. We have enough to get along on. And it’s changing. We’re [Mexico] becoming gringos. People are becoming interested in money, unfortunately. But when I came here, the rhythm of life was so easygoing. It was like a waltz. People worked as long as they wanted to. They liked what they were doing. They didn’t get paid very much money but you didn’t need very much money. I’m a Jack of all trades, master of none. I have enough to get by.”
A man at the festival this year in traditional dress from Tecolotepec, Puebla.
It seems like the man who renamed himself Cayuqui was born in the wrong era, that he’d be just as happy — or happier — in a small pre-Hispanic village, learning traditions and dances from the village elders and swapping stories with them.
