A cougar surprised residents on Tuesday in Tamazulápam del Espíritu Santo, a Mixe community in the Oaxaca Sierra.
The 2.5 meter cat was first sighted in the undergrowth of an avocado tree, and later captured by local authorities who released it in an area of woodland.
Police and residents struggled with the cougar for a few minutes to restrain it, the newspaper El Universal reported. A video posted on social media showed the bound animal being pulled from a property on its back.
The feisty feline was loaded, with some difficulty, onto a police pickup truck, where it attempted to free itself by leaping to escape the vehicle, despite being shackled.
Community spokesperson Romeo Sánchez said it was the first time a cougar related incident had been reported in the area, despite their natural habitat only being one kilometer away.
#ÚltimoMinuto
¿Qué le parece? Un puma ingresó a un domicilio en #Tamazulápam del Espíritu Santo, comunidad de la zona Mixe de #Oaxaca.
Pobladores y policías municipales lograron capturarlo y regresarlo a su hábitat.
El video lo comparte @carreraOax. pic.twitter.com/n4GZsoF8YW
Diego Guzmán related the events on social media. “This morning a cougar arrived near my parents’ house in Tama [Tamazulápam], probably looking for food. It took refuge by an avocado tree owned by my neighbors; after a few hours community members and the authorities managed to capture and later release it,” he said.
Oaxaca is the natural habitat of five species of felines: the cougar, the jaguar, the ocelot, the lynx, and the jaguarundi.
Zapatistas hijacking a train bound for Cuernavaca, Morelos. Ministry of Culture
She had the most fashionable hotel in all of Cuernavaca in the early 1900s, but then lost it all in a whirlwind of violence, running for her life.
Rosa Eleanor King was born in Karachi in 1865 to a tea plantation family during the British Empire. These beginnings did not suggest that she would be a witness to the Mexican Revolution, but she got an up-close-and-personal view of it as the fighting came to Cuernavaca. She even hosted the Revolution’s military leaders and high-level political figures in her hotel.
As an adult, she first immigrated to the United States, where she met and married Norman Robson King. From there, the couple traveled to Mexico and both fell in love with it, visiting various times, then moving to Mexico City. In 1905, they visited Cuernavaca, but it did not quite strike their fancy.
In August of 1907, Norman died suddenly, leaving behind Rosa and their two small children. Rather than return to England, King built a new life in Mexico, returning to Cuernavaca. She arrived during the rainy season, when everything was lush and green, improving her opinion of the place.
Prior to this, she had never worked, never mind run a business, but she did understand the expat community and others in the leisure class in Mexico.
British citizen Rosa King was born and raised in Mumbai. This portrait of her was taken in the 1910s in Veracruz.
She rented an old grocery store and turned it into an English-style teahouse, a place for foreigners and upper-class Mexicans to pass the time. She added what she called a “curiosity shop,” filled with local handcrafts, especially ceramics. To keep it filled, she started a ceramic workshop in a nearby indigenous community.
By 1909, the businesses were doing well enough for her to take the Morelos governor’s suggestion that she buy and remodel the Bella Vista Hotel in the center of Cuernavaca. Her modern update of the hotel opened in June of 1910, right as she was hearing rumblings of the activities of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
She was well aware of the poverty of the countryside and the hard life of the peasants and sympathized with them. But she had trouble believing that Zapata’s efforts would amount to more than any of the other uprisings in Mexico before him.
Zapata did enter Cuernavaca to meet with new president Francisco I. Madero after previous president Porfirio Díaz had been ousted after more than 30 years in office. Zapata assured King of her and her hotel’s safety, and he kept that promise.
The hotel weathered the initial storm of the Mexican Revolution, even as King’s wealthy patrons fled. Politicians and military leaders from various factions of the revolution took their place.
But then this changed with the coming of a counter-coup against Madero that brought Victoriano Huerta to power. The various rebel factions, including the Zapatistas, were incensed. Fighting escalated.
An early 20th-century postcard with an image of King’s version of the hotel.
Rosa still hoped to save her hotel, but warfare destroyed the railroad connection to Mexico City and the Zapatistas had laid siege to Cuernavaca.
When federal troops decided that they could no longer hold it, King went with the last column of soldiers out of the city, fleeing into the mountains. This is the climax and by far the bloodiest part of the story, as the Zapatistas began to pick off members of the caravan. Of 8,000 people, only 2,000 made it to safety, but Rosa was one of them.
This tale is chronicled in her book, Tempest Over Mexico, published in 1935. It also tells the story of her experiences through the rest of the war, when she lived in Mexico City, then Veracruz.
She returned to Cuernavaca after the Zapatistas were driven out in 1916, only to find that there was no way to rebuild in a city that was all but destroyed. Later, her property was declared abandoned, and she lost the title to it.
After the fighting was completely over, her children settled in Mexico City, but Rosa decided to return to Cuernavaca.
There was no hope for the hotel, nor for any other kind of business for King due to her health, but she felt she belonged there and stayed in Cuernavaca until her death in 1955.
Rosa King’s grandson, John Barnett, at front with driver, in 1930s Mexico.
What strikes me while reading her book, especially near the end, is how Rosa came to terms with all this.
Several times during the story, she talks about feeling that she wasn’t or shouldn’t have been affected by the Revolution because she was a foreigner. But by the end of the memoir, she discards this notion, deciding that she was a worm in a furrow that the farmer would not stop for (her analogy).
Despite losing everything — and almost her life — King expressed no bitterness at her fate nor anger at Zapata. The Revolution was inevitable, she said, considering conditions for the poor at the time.
The hotel was rebuilt and still exists by the city’s Juárez garden but now houses a number of shops.
In the 1950s, King was offered US $100,000 for the movie rights to her book, a fortune in those days. She turned it down because they wanted to make changes to the story.
This would be a problem later for her family as a later attempt to make a Hollywood movie stumbled over the same problem: great-grandson Phillip Barnett believes that one problem for would-be moviemakers is that King’s story has no love interest.
The Hotel Bella Vista, long after King lost her title to it. INAH
“It is not enough that she was a strong woman surviving an impossible circumstance,” he says.
Rosa’s initial descendants stayed in Mexico, but over the generations they have migrated north. Boarding school in Canada had much to do with this as various generations got their education there, made contacts and settled down.
Most are descended from Rosa’s daughter Vera, with last names such as Barnett, Pantalone and Dawe.
Few are left in Mexico, but Mexico is part of the family’s identity, and one member even decided to return to the land of his grandmother.
Phillip Barnett was raised north of the border but calls himself a rebel and returned south.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he inherited that aspect of Rosa’s personality that could not be happy anywhere else.
Architectural features such as its distinctive arches are all that’s left of the former hotel, which now houses several shops in downtown Cuernavaca.
Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.
A self-portrait by internationally famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo sold for just under US $34.9 million at an auction in New York on Tuesday, the highest price ever recorded for a piece of Latin American art.
Sotheby’s auction house sold Diego y yo (Diego and I) for $34.88 million to Eduardo F. Costantini, an Argentine real estate developer and founder of an art museum in Buenos Aires.
Painted in 1949 and last sold in 1990 for $1.4 million, a record for a Latin American artwork at the time, the self-portrait – in which Kahlo included a miniature portrait of her husband Diego Rivera on her forehead – smashed the previous record for an artwork by a Latin American artist. Rivera’s painting Los Rivales (The Rivals) set the previous record when it sold for $9.8 million in 2018.
Diego y yo is the last major self-portrait Kahlo painted before her death in 1954 at the age of 47. Sotheby’s said the artist reached “the apex of her technical mastery” around the time the painting was made.
It depicts Kahlo with her iconic monobrow and three teardrops rolling down her face. Her hair appears to be choking her.
The painting has been described as ‘a summary of all of Kahlo’s passion and pain.’
Emerging from Kahlo’s trademark monobrow is a miniature portrait of Rivera – one of Mexico’s most acclaimed muralists – with a third eye on his forehead. According to art critics, the image of Diego is representative of his prominence in Frida’s consciousness.
The couple married in 1929, divorced in 1940 and remarried later the same year. While their relationship lasted more than two decades, both Kahlo and Rivera had dalliances and affairs over the years.
According to The Washington Post, the anguish and sorrow depicted in Diego y yo could be the product of the pain Kahlo felt when Rivera began an affair with her friend and Mexican actress María Felíx the same year she painted the self-portrait.
Sotheby’s Latin America art director said in a statement that Diego y yo is more than just a beautiful artwork, describing it as a “summary of all of Kahlo’s passion and pain, a tour de force of the raw emotive power of the artist at the peak of her abilities.”
The auction house said in a statement sent to the Post that the artwork will be added to Costantini’s private collection. The identity of the seller is not publicly known.
Mexico’s national soccer team was defeated 2-1 Tuesday by Canada at a World Cup qualifying match in Edmonton, Alberta, playing under wintry conditions with the temperature at -9 C.
It was the second loss in a week for El Tri, as the men’s team is known, after the United States’ team won 2-0 in Cincinnati, Ohio, November 12.
Mexico was tied for first place with the U.S. before the game in Ohio but is now in third, with Canada at the top and the United States second in CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) standings.
Only the top three of the eight CONCACAF nations will automatically qualify for the 2022 World Cup. Tuesday’s defeat leaves El Tri in a treacherous position, only ahead of Panama.
The fourth-placed team will still have the chance to qualify through an inter-confederation playoff match.
Conditions on the pitch were poor on Tuesday, despite the forecast snow clearing before kick-off, ESPN reported.
Canada’s Cyle Larin scored both goals against Mexico goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa who wasn’t helped much by El Tri’s blunted attack, which failed to register a single shot on goal in the first half, the newspaper Reforma reported.
A late goal from Hector Herrera put Mexicoon the board, but their last-gasp efforts to secure an equalizer were thwarted by Canada goalkeeper Milan Borjan.
The teams played before a crowd of 44,212 although organizers said 50,000 tickets were sold. Heavy snow on Monday and Tuesday were blamed for the no-shows.
Memories of a freezing Edmonton could yet act as motivation for El Tri: if they qualify for the World Cup, they can expect scorching desert-like heat in Qatar.
El Tri next plays a qualifier against Jamaica, which tied with the United States in its last match, before playing home games against Costa Rica and Panama in empty stadiums as a punishment for homophobic chanting by fans.
Defense Minister Sandoval at the presidential press conference Wednesday.
The National Guard will patrol tourist destinations in Quintana Roo with a new tourism security battalion.
The new force will be formed of 1,445 National Guardsmen and begin operations on December 1 to combat crime in the Riviera Maya, which encompasses Tulum.
The latter destination has seen a rapid rise in violence, with an 80.5% jump in homicides in the first nine months of the year in annual terms.
Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced the formation of the new security force at President López Obrador’s morning news conference on Wednesday, held in Cancún. He said the battalion’s priority will be serving the municipalities of Benito Juárez (Cancún), Solidaridad (Playa del Carmen) and Tulum, locations with the state’s highest crime rates.
The force could be replicated in other parts of the country that are dependent on tourism. “It will be possible to take this model that we will use here … to apply it in other areas of the republic, in the main tourist centers …” he said.
The president confirmed that violence in the area in recent weeks had triggered the creation of the battalion. “They are painful events because nationals and foreigners lost their lives. That cannot be repeated, we have to prevent that from happening, that is why we have the plan to reinforce security,” he said.
The armed forces has seen its list of duties grow significantly under the López Obrador administration. Apart from security, military personnel have distributed gasoline, textbooks, vaccines and medication and are in charge of border surveillance, the detention and inspection of migrants and the construction and operation of the new Felipe Ángeles airport, set to open next year near Mexico City.
The leaders of Mexico, the US and Canada meet Thursday in Washington.
Cuba and energy loom as potentially contentious issues at Thursday’s North American Leaders Summit in Washington D.C., where President López Obrador will meet face to face with United States President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the first time since he took office in late 2018.
United States officials have indicated that the situation in Cuba, where a nationwide protest planned for Monday was suppressed before it happened, and energy integration will be on the agenda at the White House summit, the first between the leaders of the three North American nations since 2016.
According to an unnamed high-ranking United States official cited by the newspaper El País, Biden will ask López Obrador and Trudeau to join forces with the U.S. to demand that the Cuban government respect those who are seeking greater freedoms in the Caribbean island nation.
Monday’s planned “Civic March for Change” – at which Cubans opposed to the government intended to protest the lack of freedom under Communist Party rule and build on the momentum generated by mass demonstrations in July – fizzled because Cuban security forces prevented dissidents from leaving their houses to take to the streets.
Biden’s national security advisor said in a statement Monday that the Cuban regime had “predictably deployed a set piece of harsh prison sentences, sporadic arrests, intimidation tactics, and acts of repudiation all in an attempt to silence the voice of Cuban people.”
“… By its actions, the Cuban regime failed to respect the civil and political rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights treaties ratified by Cuba, including the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and freedom from arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile,” Jake Sullivan added.
An attempt by the United States to gain the support of its neighbors to pressure Cuba is unlikely to be well received by López Obrador, who has indicated his support for the Cuban government on repeated occasions and hosted President Miguel Díaz-Canel as a guest of honor at this year’s Independence celebrations.
“You can’t choke the Cubans who have decided to stay in Cuba,” López Obrador said Monday. “I’m against the blockade, I believe it’s inhumane. Nobody has the right to cause people to rebel against their government via these practices,” he said.
Conflicting views on energy policy could cause another flashpoint at Thursday’s summit. López Obrador sent a constitutional bill to Congress in October that seeks to overhaul electricity market rules so that the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission is guaranteed a 54% share.
López Obrador, Biden and Trudeau: the ‘three amigos’ are back.
López Obrador said last week he didn’t expect his proposed electricity reform would be a topic for discussion in Washington, but U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols said that energy issues will be on the agenda.
“I don’t want to totally preview the president’s meeting but I will say there will be a broad discussion of integrating North American supply chains, labor issues [and] ensuring that we continue to make progress in North American energy integration,” he told the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
“[These] are some of the examples of the issues in USMCA [that will be up for discussion],” Nichols said, referring to the North American free trade agreement that took effect in July last year.
United States companies have denounced the Mexican government’s energy policies and plans, including the proposed electricity reform and oil sector changes, arguing that they violate the USMCA.
The United States’ top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, wrote to the U.S. government twice earlier this year to ask it to urge the Mexican government to uphold its trade agreement commitments to treat American petroleum sector investors and exporters fairly.
Canadian companies, and Canada’s ambassador to Mexico, have also raised concerns about Mexico’s energy sector policies and plans, which in a nutshell seek to give the state greater control at the expense of private and foreign companies.
While issues related to Cuba and energy could cause discord, Thursday’s trilateral meeting – the first gathering in five years of the so-called “three amigos” – is slated to focus more on commonality and cooperation than things that divide the nations.
The White House said in a statement last week that the countries will reaffirm their strong ties and integration during the summit, “while also charting a new path for collaboration on ending the COVID-19 pandemic and advancing health security; competitiveness and equitable growth, to include climate change; and a regional vision for migration.”
Foreign Minister Ebrard said the main issues Mexico will raise are development cooperation for southern Mexico and Central America, “regional economic integration to promote investment in our country,” preparation for the next pandemic and “how to achieve fair economic recovery in 2022 and 2023.”
Mission president Alfredo Zanudo and his wife Guadalupe were threatened with a knife in the attack. Church of Latter-day Saints
Seventy Mormon missionaries in Torreón, Coahuila, were robbed by armed men last Friday.
The attackers, who the church’s spokesperson Sam Pernod said in a statement entered a church meetinghouse in the Ampliación Los Ángeles neighborhood, demanded cell phones, tablets, watches and wallets from the 57 men and 13 women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Mission president Alfredo Zanudo and his wife Guadalupe were threatened with a knife. Some missionaries in the group were hit and kicked, but no one required medical attention, Penrod said.
Penrod added that the men were carrying guns but did not say that they were used to threaten the missionaries.
The head of the local Attorney General’s Office, Maurilio Ochoa Rivera, said that the assailants’ movements had been tracked after they tried to withdraw money using a stolen bank card.
Torreón’s Chief of Police Manuel Pineda Rangel said the crime was the first of its kind, according to police records. “We checked the crime statistics, and there are no reports of a similar event,” he said.
He added that patrols would be increased around religious sites and places where large groups gather to avoid any further large-scale robberies.
Penrod said that the Church of Latter-day Saints was taking additional precautions.
“Missionaries have been removed from the area where the incident occurred and instructed to be extra cautious. A church security officer is in Torreón to evaluate the situation,” he said. “Our prayers are with these missionaries and their families as they recover from this frightening and traumatic experience.”
Coronavirus case numbers declined during 16 consecutive weeks to early November, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday.
Speaking at President López Obrador’s regular news conference, López-Gatell said case numbers declined 7% in epidemiological week 44, which ran from October 31 to November 6.
“[We’ve had] 16 continuous weeks of reductions,” he said before acknowledging that the week 44 decline wasn’t as significant as those recorded in previous weeks.
Mexico is currently in week 46 but data for the two most recent weeks is not considered reliable for epidemiological purposes because it may be incomplete and subject to change.
López-Gatell also said that hospitalizations of COVID-19 patients continues to trend down. Compared to the hospital occupancy peak in January – the worst month of the pandemic for COVID-19 deaths – the number of patients current receiving hospital treatment is down 90%, he said.
The deputy minister also reported that 129.8 million vaccine doses have been administered across Mexico. He said 75.5 million people have received shots and 84% of that number are fully vaccinated. López-Gatell also said the government will offer vaccines to youths aged 15 to 17, although he didn’t say when inoculation will begin.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s accumulated case tally is currently 3.84 million after 775 new infections were reported Monday. The official COVID-19 death toll rose by 57 to 291,147. There are 22,113 estimated active cases, including more than 3,000 in Mexico City and over 2,600 in Baja California, the only high risk orange state on the federal government’s coronavirus stoplight map.
González is believed to be a financial operator of the CJNG.
The wife of the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) was arrested in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Monday.
Rosalinda González Valencia, wife of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was captured in Zapopan by soldiers working in conjunction with the federal Attorney General’s Office and the National Intelligence Center.
The Ministry of National Defense (Sedena) said in a statement that soldiers were acting on an arrest warrant issued against González for several crimes.
It said that evidence suggests she is linked to the “illicit financial operation of an organized crime group.”
The arrest of González, who was previously detained in Zapopan in 2018 on money laundering charges but released from prison on bail of almost 1.6 million pesos (US $77,000), is a “significant blow for the financial structure of organized crime in the state of Jalisco,” Sedena said.
The ministry said she was transferred to a federal women’s prison in Coatlán del Río, Morelos.
The arrest of González, who authorities said in 2018 was the “administrator of the economic and legal resources” of the CJNG, came just days after her brother, José González Valencia, was extradited to the United States from Brazil on drug trafficking charges. He is alleged to be a member of Los Cuinis, a gang considered the CJNG’s financial arm.
Another brother, Abigael González Valencia, former leader of Los Cuinis, was arrested in Puerto Vallarta in 2015 and is collaborating with federal authorities on the case of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014. Two other brothers were given prison sentences for drug and weapons charges in late 2019, while yet another brother was arrested in 2016.
Rosalinda González’s son is also in prison on cartel-related charges.
Meanwhile, Oseguera – wanted in both Mexico and the United States, where a US $10 million reward is on offer for information leading to his arrest — remains at large.
The cartel he heads – generally considered Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization – is notorious for violence and engaged in vicious turf wars in several parts of the country, including Michoacán and Guanajuato. Authorities expressed concern that the arrest of Oseguera’s wife could trigger reprisal attacks.
El Mencho and other former members of the Milenio Cartel formed the CJNG in 2010 with the aim of seizing control of drug trafficking and other criminal activities in the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.
Eleven years later, it is a transnational criminal organization with contacts in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Central America and the United States.
The cartel, a major mover of drugs such as cocaine and fentanyl, is believed to operate out of at least 24 Mexican states including Jalisco, Michoacán, Baja California, Veracruz, Chihuahua and Mexico City, where it allegedly carried out an attempt on the life of the capital’s police chief last year.
Committee members meet with government representatives in Mexico City on Monday.
The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) has begun a 12-day “historic visit” to Mexico during which it will assess the country’s capacity to respond to the missing persons crisis in which more than 94,000 people have disappeared.
Headed by Peruvian lawyer Carmen Rosa Villa Quintana, the committee is made up of a group of experts who monitor the implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Mexico is party.
The CED has been seeking to come to Mexico since 2013 but the previous federal government rejected its requests to visit despite pleas by victims’ family members that it be allowed to enter the country.
“This is a historic visit, requested since 2013,” Villa said Monday during an event with federal officials.
The CED is slated to visit 12 states and meet with municipal and state officials, relatives of missing people, civil society representatives and National Human Rights Commission officials, among others.
The U.N. experts will also attend exhumations carried out by authorities and victims’ families, accompany search brigades on missions to locate missing people and visit prisons to examine their registration systems.
Villa said her team has two main objectives: to help Mexico prevent enforced disappearances and to contribute to the fight against impunity.
Mexico has extremely high impunity rates for numerous crimes, including abductions and homicides. In addition, due to a lack of forensic experts and money, authorities have struggled to keep up with the immense task of identifying the bodies of victims of crime.
According to data disseminated by Movimiento por Nuestros Desaparecidos (Movement for Our Missing People), a non-governmental organization, there are more than 52,000 unidentified bodies in morgues.
Speaking at Monday’s event, Deputy Interior Minister for Human Rights Alejandro Encinas acknowledged that the federal government has a missing persons “crisis” on its hands.
“It was at the beginning of this government that the state opened itself up to international scrutiny and supervision and recognized the crisis of the disappearance of people that today adds up to more than 94,000 missing people,” he said.
“This is the most painful legacy the government of Mexico faces and one in which we have to make the greatest effort … to overcome [it],” said Encinas, who has previously described Mexico as an “enormous hidden grave.”
“I want this visit to be beneficial, for it to have good results,” the deputy minister said, explaining that the government is open to hearing the CED’s recommendations.
“… The success of your mission will imply the success of the policies we are implementing. We’re willing to open the doors to the entire federal government so that you can fulfill your mission,” he added.
The CED is scheduled to hold a press conference on the final day of its visit to Mexico – November 26, and will publish a report on its findings next March.
