A memorial to the lost miners. organización familia pasta de conchos
Preparations for an operation to recover the bodies of 63 of 65 miners who died in an explosion in a Coahuila mine in 2006 are set to begin, but it will be some time before the remains of the deceased men are brought above ground.
The Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) announced Tuesday that construction of some of the infrastructure required for the recovery mission at the Pasta de Conchos mine would begin soon.
Only two bodies were recovered after the methane explosion at the Grupo México-owned coal mine in San Juan de Sabinas. Tunnels will be built for the operation with the intention of recovering the other 63.
The companies Desarrollo de Terracerías and Proacon México have been awarded a 308.9-million-peso (US $15.2 million) contract to build shafts into the mine, the CFE said in a statement. Construction is expected to begin this month and is slated for completion by April 2023.
Another contract is likely to be awarded next month for the construction of additional infrastructure including access ramps and tunnels. It’s anticipated that that work will be completed over a period of 20 months.
A third phase of the project will involve more preparations for the recovery of the bodies, including degassing of the mine and its stabilization, as well as the actual search for and retrieval of the miners’ remains. No time period has been set for the completion of that stage, but it’s scheduled to begin in May 2023.
At a meeting on Tuesday at which the recovery plan was outlined, Labor Minister Luisa María Alcalde thanked CFE director Manuel Bartlett for his commitment to the families of the victims, for whom the tragedy has had no end.
President López Obrador announced in May 2019 that he had ordered a recovery operation.
“… We cannot turn our backs on the pain of humanity. This is a humanist government. So we are going to carry out this action,” he said at the time.
At Tuesday’s meeting in Nueva Rosita, the municipal seat of San Juan de Sabinas, a CFE engineering chief working on the rescue project noted the president’s commitment to recovering the bodies. Vicente Arévalo Mendoza also gave an update on the information provided to the victims’ families at meetings the government has held with them.
Thirty-four family members have been employed by the CFE to work on the project, 18 of whom remain in paid positions.
The Pasta de Conchos tragedy is one of numerous coal mine disasters in Mexico that have claimed lives. The deadliest was the Rosita Vieja mine disaster in 1908, in which 200 miners, most of whom were Japanese immigrant laborers, were killed.
State police assumed responsibility for security in San Juan Evangelista.
Security forces disarmed a municipal police force in Veracruz on Tuesday, making it the 29th such force to be put out of operation in the eastern state in three years.
Officers in San Juan Evangelista, 340 kilometers southeast of Xalapa, were stood down by state police officers, state Fuerza Civil agents, the army and the navy.
The Fuerza Civil assumed responsibility for security in the municipality.
The officers were sent to the Veracruz police academy (CEIS) for evaluation and to ensure they are licensed to carry firearms.
San Juan Evangelista is state’s 29th municipality to be disarmed since Governor Cuitláhuac García took office in December 2018.
The municipalities of Papantla and Zongolica had their police forces disarmed in June, as did Playa Vicente in May and Orizaba in February 2021. In some of the cases, municipal police officers were suspected of collaborating with criminal organizations.
Migrants performed the lip-sewing operation on each other during Tuesday's protest.
Ten Central American migrants in Chiapas took a two-week protest against immigration authorities to a new extreme on Tuesday: they sewed their lips together while demonstrating in Tapachula.
Some 400 undocumented migrants are demanding humanitarian visas which would legalize their status in Mexico.
Tuesday’s drastic action came after demonstrations by hundreds of migrants over 14 days. Some complained immigration authorities had mocked and deceived them, the newspaper El Orbe reported.
Rafael Hernández, a migrant from Venezuela, said they left their countries for a better future in the United States but they’re forced to wait three to four months for a first interview with immigration authorities.
Hernández hopes to reach Monterrey, Nuevo León, and requested the National Immigration Institute (INM) provide visas to allow him to travel within Mexico.
Illegal migrants crossing the southern border are generally arrested and sent to prison-like migrant detention centers for an indeterminate period, or are told to go to Tapachula’s Olympic Stadium, a refugee camp where they are provided no humanitarian services and there are no immigration officials.
The legal status of migrants in Tapachula is increasingly clouded: they have been banned from leaving while they await the outcome of their applications to the refugee agency COMAR and the INM. However, both agencies have collapsed under the pressure of migrant influxes, leaving undocumented migrants waiting for responses to applications without any reliable time frame.
Many opt to join migrant caravans, in defiance of the authorities. It can be their best bet: some who left in a caravan on October 18 are in the United States with asylum applications pending.
The price of guacamole will likely rise in the US due to the avocado import ban. shutterstock
The United States’ suspension of Mexican avocado imports will hurt an export industry worth over US $3.4 billion last year and threaten supply of the popular fruit in the U.S. market.
The Ministry of Agriculture announced Saturday that the United States had advised that it was temporarily suspending avocado shipments because a Michoacán-based U.S. inspector with the the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service had received a threatening phone call. The embargo took effect last Friday.
It is unclear how long the suspension will last, although Mexican authorities have expressed optimism that it will be lifted promptly.
Avocado exports to the United States from Michoacán – the only state with authorization to ship the fruit across the northern border – were worth over $2.8 billion last year and the avocado industry in that state employs some 300,000 people directly and indirectly, according to the agricultural consultancy GMCA.
About 80% of Mexican exports go to the United States, and avocados grown in Michoacán account for the same percentage of the U.S. market.
Noting that avocados are a perishable product, GCMA director Juan Anaya said the U.S. ban on imports is “a serious problem.”
Finding alternative export markets while the suspension remains in place won’t be easy, he told the newspaper El País.
“… The Mexican government has to come to an agreement with the … [U.S.] Department of Agriculture and the Embassy so that … avocado exports can resume shortly,” Anaya said.
“The value of exports is amazing, it’s our third [biggest export] product after beer and tequila,” he said.
Little is known about the threat received by the U.S. inspector, but it is presumed it was made by a member of a criminal organization involved in the extortion of avocado producers in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violent states.
Avocado exports to the US from Michoacán were worth $2.8 billion last year.
President López Obrador claimed Monday that economic and political interests were also a factor in the United States’ decision to suspend imports.
“We have to review what it’s about,” he told reporters at his regular news conference.
“There are a lot of economic and political interests in all this; there is competition – they don’t want the Mexican avocado to enter the United States or to dominate due to its quality,” López Obrador said.
“Some people, like the president, speculate that it’s a non-tariff barrier to exert pressure [on Mexico],” he said.
The GCMA chief noted that Mexico is vulnerable to United States trade barriers given that its northern neighbor is the primary market for numerous agricultural export products, among which are beef, blueberries, tomatoes and sugar.
In an interview with Bloomberg News, López Obrador’s spokesman and communications director said the government is cooperating with its U.S. counterpart and that the suspension could be lifted in a matter of days.
Jesús Ramírez said the government has established the identity of the person who threatened the U.S. inspector, although he asserted he didn’t personally know who it was.
The threat made was not concerning, he told the news agency Tuesday, saying “it has no importance” and his understanding was that it was not a “direct threat.”
“There’s no problem so we’re going to see what more is required” in order for the suspension to be lifted, Ramírez said.
The longer it remains in place, the greater the impact on the U.S. market will be. The import ban is expected to affect supplies in the United States, where avocados are a virtual staple in many households, and increase prices for the so-called alligator pear at a time when its cost is at a two-decade high for this time of the year.
“We could see a significant reduction in availability,” said David Magana, senior analyst for financial services company Rabobank International in Fresno, California.
Despite that likelihood, the managing member and co-founder of California-based importer and vendor Freska Produce International said the decision to suspend Mexican avocado imports is “the right one.”
“We need to guarantee the safety of all who work in the avocado industry,” Gary Clevenger said.
“Not sure how long this will last but it’s going to put a bump in the supply side for a while. This could have longer-term effects if people decide not to buy Mexican avocados at both a retail buyer or consumer level, so it will be good for other importing countries coming to the U.S.,” he said.
“Hopefully everybody gets their act back together and Mexico allows for the flow of avocados again. We’ll have to see how this plays out.”
The Uber driver, left, was arrested after the victim's parents rammed his car.
A mother and father gave chase after their child was spirited off by the driver of a Uber ride share vehicle in Mexico City on Monday.
The child’s father, Gustavo “E,” 32, was traveling in an Uber with his 7-year-old son in Álvaro Obregón when he asked the driver to stop at a stand selling flowers. Gustavo exited the vehicle to make a purchase, leaving his son in the backseat.
The driver, a 71-year-old Iranian national identified as Mohammad Mohammdi Shir Mahaleh, then drove off with the boy.
The newspaper Milenio reported that Gustavo quickly went to a spa where his wife works and found she was already speaking with the boy on her cellphone, who told her he was near a supermarket in the area.
The couple traveled there together in the mother’s sports utility vehicle and rescued their son, before the driver attempted to escape.
The trio then chased the Uber driver and managed to cut him off on a nearby street by ramming his vehicle and forcing it onto the sidewalk, where he was arrested by police.
There were 21,931 criminal cases related to kidnapping in 2021, of which 2,027, or 9%, were in Mexico City.
The crime has been of increasing concern for citizens in the capital: in 2015 there were only 742 cases reported, 63% fewer than in 2021. The worst year on record for crimes related to kidnapping was 2019, when 2,443 crimes were registered.
The state's famous mummies are bodies of people who died during a 19th century cholera outbreak.
A team of experts will attempt to establish the identity of the mummies on display at the Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato and two other locations in the capital of the Bajío region state.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced Monday that it had formed a commission of four specialists in physical anthropology and conservation to work on a research project aimed at identifying the more than 100 mummies in the museum’s collection as well as those held at the Sangre de Cristo tourism center and the Santa Paula Cemetery Museum.
Their work will be supervised by INAH’s physical anthropology chief Juan Manuel Argüelles San Millán.
In a statement, Argüelles noted that the mummies are the bodies of people who had a name, age and family when they died during a 19th century cholera outbreak in Guanajuato city.
However, the identity of the mummified victims – some of whom possibly have living descendants – is unknown today, leaving many to be referred to by nicknames such as “El ahogado” (The Drowned Man), “La china” (The Chinese Lady) and “La bruja” (The Witch).
Argüelles said that establishing their identity will help restore dignity to the bodies, which have deteriorated over the years due to a lack of specialist care.
He said the INAH team – made up of two men and two women described as “specialists in mummified human remains” – will trawl through municipal, state and church archives to aid their efforts to identify the mummies, whose mummification occurred naturally after entombment due to the absence of moisture or oxygen exchange.
They have already made a first visit to Guanajuato city to obtain information they will use to draw up their plan of action, Argüelles said.
He said the experts will use a “precise” methodology to examine the mummies and stressed that their commitment to the identification task is “complete and impartial.”
Most of the famous mummies of Guanajuato – the first of which was exhumed almost 160 years ago – are displayed nude because their clothes disintegrated over time. The Museum of the Mummies of Guanajuato is a major tourism attraction, with over 600,000 visitors in 2019.
The reason for Izamal's nickname, The Yellow City, is obvious, although how its walls first got painted yellow is not.
Looking for an ideal day trip for your friends visiting Mexico who are keen on exploring pre-Hispanic and colonial sites? The small town of Izamal in Yucatán is a great choice.
Categorized as one of Mexico’s magical towns, Izamal has been a pilgrimage site since before the conquest. Situated around 70 kilometers from Mérida, off the Mérida-Cancún highway, it’s often known as The Yellow City.
This history of the town’s yellow-painted walls with white touches is unclear. Different theories exist: one says they were painted yellow to represent a Maya sun god, while another claims they were painted ahead of Pope John Paul II’s visit to Izamal in 1993.
One of Izamal’s nicknames is The City of Three Cultures – alluding to its mix of pre-Hispanic, colonial, and present-day characteristics. It’s also referred to as the City of Hills – which refers to its overgrown pyramids that the Spanish colonizers thought resembled hills.
Izamal is named after its founder, who according to UNESCO was a priest called Zamná, associated with the Maya creator god Itzamná.
The upper pyramid of Kinich Kak Moo.
Izamal is believed to be one of the Yucatán peninsula’s earliest Maya cities. According to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the city was first occupied around 2,700 years ago, and its significant constructions took place in the early and late Classic period (A.D. 250–900).
Ancient Izamal had a large network of Maya white roads. One notable road is the one that connects to the Maya site Aké, situated to the west.
According to INAH, Izamal was a place of worship since it was considered Itzamná’s place, and since Zamná was believed to be buried there. It remained a key place of worship for the ancient Mayas even after it was mostly abandoned in the Postclassic period, which was likely the reason for the colonizers to settle there. The town remains a pilgrimage site to this day, especially for those of the Catholic faith.
There are several pre-Hispanic structures to explore in Izamal, in addition to the beautiful town and its colonial buildings. The ancient Maya structures are spread out, so prepare for extensive walking.
North of the main plaza is a large pyramid called Kinich Kak Moo, which means “fire macaw with solar face.” The ancient Maya believed that the sun deity to whom the Kinich Kak Moo pyramid was dedicated descended daily as a fire macaw to collect its offerings.
With a massive base measuring 200 by 180 meters and its upper pyramid reaching over 34 meters in height, it is the third-largest pyramid in Mexico. It is built over a cave that is considered a holy place. The pyramid once had stucco decoration, but no signs of it exist today.
The indoor atrium of the St. Anthony of Padua monastery, built by Franciscan monks.
The base has several stairways. The present-day entrance is from the south.
The upper temple of Kinich Kak Moo offers breathtaking views from its peak, allowing you to imagine the great ancient Maya city that Izamal once was. Climbing this pyramid is allowed, but the stairs are not in good condition, so climb with care.
South of the plaza, you’ll find the widely photographed St. Anthony of Padua monastery. Painted in yellow and white, it was built in the 16th century by Franciscan monks on what was once a pyramid called Paap Hol Chak.
The famous priest Diego de Landa supervised the beginning of its construction, and the project architect was also a priest – Juan de Mérida.
There are three ramps to access the monastery, with the main entrance on the west side. It features a beautiful rectangular atrium with four chapels. After the one in the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, this site is considered to have the world’s second largest indoor atrium, and the largest in the Americas.
A notable feature of the monastery is a gold-plated altarpiece with religious scenes. On this altarpiece is the sculpture of the Virgin of Izamal, which de Landa had brought from Guatemala.
The priest had brought two identical sculptures of the Virgin – one of which was kept in Izamal and the other in Mérida. However, the statue in Izamal was destroyed by a fire in the early 19th century, so the one in Mérida was later moved here.
What else can you check out in this beautiful town? The mural paintings in the monastery, believed to have been the artwork of the Spanish, are worth seeing. Also, make time to take a walk in nearby Itzamná park and its widely photographed landmark sign welcoming visitors to Izamal.
East of the main plaza is Izamal’s second-largest pyramid, Itzamatul. Multiple building phases can be identified here. INAH says this pyramid was dedicated to Itzamná. On our recent visit, this pyramid was closed to visitors.
West of the main plaza is another temple called Kabul. When the explorers Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens visited Izamal in the 1840s, Catherwood – an artist and architect – drew the image of the large stucco mask of the sun god, Kinich Ahau, that was on this building but no longer exists. South of the plaza is a structure called Habuk that is also worth seeing.
There are other pre-Hispanic structures to see in Izamal, in addition to exploring the yellow city. Also, the crafts museum in town is particularly interesting. And don’t forget to indulge in some local food.
Thilini Wijesinhe, a financial professional turned writer and entrepreneur, moved to Mexico in 2019 from Australia. She writes from Mérida, Yucatán. Her website can be found at https://momentsing.com/
Mónica Díaz, 46, of León, Guanajuato, died of COVID on October 16, 2020. 'She was a hard working and lovely woman. 1st college graduate in the family. She loved to knit blankets for every newborn in the family. We miss her so much.' From @FacesOfCOVID February 14
The fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic has declined during three consecutive weeks, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, the coronavirus point man said that case numbers fell by over 40% during the past three weeks.
The most recent decline was 48%, “almost half [the number of cases] with respect to the previous week,” López-Gatell said.
“The incidence of new cases is now below what we reached in all the previous waves and is still going down,” he said.
The Health Ministry reported Monday that there were just under 92,000 estimated active cases – less than one-third the peak recorded during the current omicron-fueled wave.
López-Gatell said that hospital occupancy levels are also trending downward.
“The COVID units are emptying out,” he said, noting that the national occupancy rate for general care hospital beds and beds with ventilators is 30% and 22%, respectively.
Some of the beds were freed up because their occupants died. López-Gatell acknowledged that COVID fatalities were up last week compared to the previous seven-day period, but highlighted that the current death rate is 71% lower than the pandemic peak, recorded during the second wave in January 2021.
“As we have commented multiple times, approximately three weeks after cases start coming down, deaths go down,” he said.
According to that prediction, there should be fewer deaths this week than last. The highest single-day death tally of the fourth wave was recorded last Thursday with 927 COVID-related fatalities. More than 500 were recorded on Friday and Saturday, while just 146 and 122 were reported on Sunday and Monday, respectively.
Mexico’s official death toll rose to 312,965 on Monday, the world’s fifth highest total, while the accumulated case tally is just over 5.3 million, a figure considered a vast undercount due to the low testing rate.
López-Gatell told reporters that 90% of Mexicans aged 18 and over are vaccinated, while the rate among minors who have been offered shots– those aged 15 to 17 – is 52%. He also said that 68% of people aged 60 and over, and 36% of those aged 40 to 59, have had booster shots.
The event is ready to go if the mayor gives the word.
Mazatlán’s annual carnival is likely to go ahead even if Sinaloa remains yellow on the coronavirus stoplight map, the mayor said this week.
Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres said that if the stoplight remains yellow, the final decision will be in his hands. “We are going to wait for the result of the stoplight because remember that being in yellow, it is no longer the power of any committee, it is the [power of the] municipal council,” he said.
However, Benítez insisted that he would follow the guidance of the governor: “I will respect what Governor Rubén Rocha Moya thinks. If in a given case he thinks it prudent, we will stop it.”
The news site Debate reported that Rocha supported the event going ahead if the stoplight remained yellow, but that Health Minister Héctor Melesio Cuén was against it.
Benítez said the stoplight color would be confirmed on Friday and that the signs were positive, given that the pandemic was declining. “I am sure that things will be on the right track … the pandemic is continuing to decline. While it’s true that there was a small fluctuation, it continues to fall,” he said.
The economic hit of canceling the event would be severe, Benítez added. “It would be quite bad for Mazatlán … for the local businesses. Imagine the hotel owners, who already received their deposits, giving back money in these times we are living in … [if it’s] yellow it’s very probable that it will go ahead.”
The planning of the event is already 90% complete and more than 70% of hotel rooms are taken, according to the news site.
Carnival is the biggest event of the year in Mazatlán and is reported to be the third largest in the world after Rio de Janeiro and New Orleans. It was first held in 1898 and is set to run from February 24-March 1.
A previous edition of a collective wedding in Nezahualcóyotl.
Six hundred and sixty-one couples married en masse at a Valentine’s Day ceremony in México state on Monday.
The service in Nezahualcóyotl, 20 kilometers east of the center of Mexico City, revived an annual tradition made redundant by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, among the wedding dresses, rings and flowers, the newlyweds-in-waiting still had to wear face masks and use antibacterial gel.
The event was still relatively small: the maximum number of couples in other years was 1,200, while in 2021 a virtual service was held online.
The couples were married at no charge and professional makeup was provided by local beauty schools. The municipal government also raffled gifts and trips among the newlyweds.
Jonhatan García finally tied the knot with his partner of 10 years, with whom he has a child. He said the timing was right: “We would have liked to get married before, but it [the pandemic] was worse then,” he said.
José Luis Ibarra married María Edith Peña after the couple met in a shopping mall two years ago. “Really happy. Really proud to have a partner like her and hopefully it will be for life,” he said.
“We already treated each other like a couple. There was always good chemistry, good communication and above all, a lot of love,” Edith said.
Meanwhile, Dolores Bojórquez married a professional wrestler called Flama Roja (Red Flame), the newspaper Infobae reported. She said the public service had enabled them to say their vows. “We wouldn’t have been able to marry due to the economy … we took advantage of these weddings,” she said.
Bojórquez added she was grateful to have the opportunity to marry, despite the pandemic. “We wouldn’t have ever expected to marry in face masks but we have to be thankful that we are here and that we could marry,” she said.
However, the mood in Mexico was less festive than normal. Only 17% of people planned to celebrate Valentine’s Day and 57.5% were set on staying home, according to a survey by the insurance website HelloSafe México. The survey of 985 Mexicans was compiled from January 21-February 1.
