A cow in Guanaceví, Durango, contemplated his snowy existence last week after a snowstorm hit the municipality. Twitter
There’s more to Mexico than sweltering heat and beach destinations. There are two towns that have been called the coldest in the country and they are both in Guanaceví, Durango.
La Rosilla, 370 kilometers north of Durango city near the Chihuahua state border, is traditionally considered the most frigid place in Mexico, but it’s Ciénega de la Vaca, 44 kilometers south, which is likely to numb fingers even faster.
Temperatures dipped to -18 C in Ciénega last weekend, and snow fell on Sunday.
Governor José Rosas Aispuro confirmed Ciénega was the colder of the two towns. La Rosilla, he said, is often mistaken for the coldest as it’s where official temperatures are recorded.
Both are in the vicinity of the Western Sierra Madre mountains. Ciénega is so remote that it’s most easily reached by air.
La Rosilla has a population of about 300, while Ciénega is even smaller and is one of the least populated towns in Guanaceví. Local people are so accustomed to the freezing temperatures that a campfire and a warm jacket are enough to counteract the cold.
Hipólito Heredia, 60, who lives in La Rosilla, said he’d become used to the cold after years of experience.
But for others, it’s harder to bear: about 800 families in the area receive some form of welfare to help mitigate the cold, the news site Telediario reported.
Journalist Carmen Aristegui on her show on Friday.
A well-known and respected journalist has hit back at President López Obrador after he accused her of misleading people during her long media career.
Speaking at his regular news conference on Friday, López Obrador asserted that Carmen Aristegui “deceived” the public “for a long time.”
“I knew people who saw in Carmen Aristegui the communication model to follow, [they saw her as] the paladin of freedom,” he said.
Aristegui – a print, radio and television journalist with more than 30 years’ experience – is “highly revered” but she is biased “in favor of the conservative bloc,” López Obrador said, referring to his opponents.
He accused her of propagating slander and libel in numerous reports before railing against political analysts Denise Dresser and Sergio Aguayo as well as National Electoral Institute president Lorenzo Córdova, all of whom have collaborated with the journalist.
At a news conference on Friday, President López Obrador said that Carmen Aristegui “deceived” the public “for a long time.”
In her radio program on Friday, Aristegui – whose news outlet recently published a report that questioned the business interests of López Obrador’s adult sons – took issue with the remarks made by the president, who is frequently critical of sections of the press.
“The president of the republic referred to me again in a very aggressive way,” she said.
“… He doesn’t seem to realize that he holds enormous power,” Aristegui added before asserting that the intention of his remarks was to discredit her reputation, career, credibility and “journalistic prestige.”
She took aim at the president for using public resources – “like the National Palace and his own time” – to attack her and other journalists. Aristegui also emphasized the importance of journalism to democracy, especially in a country such as Mexico where that system of government is so “imperfect.”
“… We’re in a delicate, difficult transition in which … the work of journalists is very important. … At the end of the day, journalists have a job to do and in this job … various things are involved: information, … debate of public interest issues, criticism – criticism [of those in power] is a basic ingredient in democracies,” she said.
“… The exercise of power needs critical eyes and needs exercises that are not sympathetic to power. This is part of democratic nature. In a reasonably healthy or functional democracy, journalists play an important role to offer information, news, revelations, debate…,” Aristegui said.
The journalist defended her own work in the face of López Obrador’s attempt to “damage” her reputation.
“… I’ve been a journalist for many years, and I’ve done my work in the best way I could and the public will say what they have to say about my career,” Aristegui said.
“… It’s regrettable … that he, the president of the republic, wants to use his very powerful word to destroy reputations,” she said.
“… It’s not any old thing, and I think we do have to highlight the fact that … the president of Mexico … is determined to damage … [me]. … There is nothing more serious than saying things such as those the president says,” Aristegui charged.
“… He even accused me of deceiving people, he accused me of absolutely absurd things, and now it’s up to each person to work out who’s deceiving who,” she said before describing López Obrador’s conduct as “deplorable.”
An opinion piece published by news website SDP Noticias under the byline Barruntos Políticos (Political Suspicions) questioned why AMLO is attacking Aristegui now after supporting her battle against the abuse of power for years.
Aristegui’s news outlet had recently published a report that questioned the business interests of López Obrador’s adult sons. United Nations
It said that “brusque and strange movements” are often part of “political chess” but asserted that, deep down, the president “maintains his respect and admiration for Carmen Aristegui.”
“But he understands that her role as a journalist leads her to a scenario of constant confrontation against power” and that’s why the president – who charged in 2020 that his government was “not the same as those who censored Carmen Aristegui” – decided to go on the offensive.
“… Aristegui is the complete opposite to characters such as Carlos Loret de Mola: her journalism is the fruit of exhaustive research by an excellent team and doesn’t respond to political interests or personal attacks,” it said.
“… AMLO has decided to ‘step into the ring’ with Aristegui because he sees in her a legitimate commentator on issues that could generate distrust … in his government,” the op-ed said.
“… Carmen Aristegui will never be an accomplice of the government and her voice represents free questioning,” it said.
“… We hope that the dialogue between AMLO and Aristegui doesn’t separate them too much from the social justice conviction they have both shared for more than 20 years.”
The latter has interviewed the former on numerous occasions and the pair had shared a relationship of respect, but López Obrador was clearly irked by last November’s report by Aristegui Noticias and five other media organizations that asserted that a cacao plantation owned by his sons in Tabasco benefited from Sembrando Vida (Sowing Life), the federal government’s allegedly corruption-plagued tree-planting employment program.
“[The news magazine] Proceso and Carmen Aristegui have never been in favor of our movement,” he said after its publication.
“… They’ve never done journalism in favor of the [common] people, I want to make that clear. … It’s thought these pseudo-objective, pseudo-progressive, pseudo-independent media organizations have links to us but they don’t, … there’s no affection [for the government].”
While the president argues to the contrary, impartiality – a basic precept of news reporting – is one of Aristegui’s strengths, some observers say.
“… Just two or three years ago, opponents of Mexican president López Obrador accused Carmen Aristegui of being ‘pro-AMLO,’ Jan Albert-Hootsen, Mexico representative of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists tweeted Friday.
Carmen Aristegui’s broadcast on Friday in which she responded to the president’s remarks.
“Aristegui was never pro or anti-AMLO. She and her team do what they have always done: critical journalism,” he added.
So far this year, 12 trailers have been toppled by wind in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec area, authorities reported. Twitter @CuartaPlana
Eight trucks were knocked over on highways in Oaxaca within 24 hours by gusts of wind up to 240 kilometers per hour, comparable to those which produce Category 3 hurricanes.
The strong winds arrived on Friday night as part of a cold front and toppled three trucks. On Saturday, five more trucks were felled by winds on the La Ventosa-La Venta highway, all in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
The head of state Civil Protection, Oscar Valencia, said the gales knocked down trees and billboards on the highways, destroyed corrugated roofs and left a truck’s cargo box stranded on a bridge.
No injuries or deaths were reported.
A Civil Protection delegate, Jesús González Pérez, said the agency prevented cars and trailers with empty cargo boxes from driving on part of the road, well known for its windy conditions at this time of year.
The agency also restricted fishing and maritime activities after the winds provoked two to three-meter waves in the Gulf of Tehuantepec.
Meanwhile, in the towns of Unión Hidalgo, Santiago Niltepec and Asunción Ixtaltepec roofs were damaged; in El Espinal, San Pedro Comitancillo and San Blas Atempa there were power cuts.
La Ventosa is a region well known for its blustery conditions: it is home to wind farms and its name means “the windy one.”
A depiction of La Noche Triste (The Night of Sorrows), in which the Spanish conquistadors sustained heavy casualities while trying to flee Tenochtitlán. Library of Congress
During the conquest of the Mexica Empire, Hernán Cortés faced a challenge from a rival Spanish expedition that aimed to supplant his leadership.
In the end, however, he marshaled enough support to overcome this challenge and later justified his actions through a medieval Castilian legal principle called obedezco pero no cumplo. He noted that he had never received any orders recalling him from his sovereign — Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the king of Spain — and that had he received any such directive, he would have obeyed it. At the time, however, obeying an order (obedecer) could be understood as listening to it but not necessarily implementing it (cumplir) if the situation on the ground warranted otherwise.
This explanation of Cortés’ use of medieval law to explain his 16th-century conduct is one way in which he and his fellow soldier-adventurers of the Spanish Empire get a more comprehensive treatment in the book Conquistadores: A New History of Spanish Discovery and Conquest by historian Fernando Cervantes.
“It had not occurred to me that it was possible to write a history of the conquest that would say something new,” Cervantes said in a Zoom interview. Yet, he added, “every time I sat down to write, at that moment I would see a different angle.”
A professor at the University of Bristol, Cervantes has researched colonial Mexico and early modern Spain for almost 40 years. He has a family connection to several early conquistadors.
Historian Fernando Cervantes has studied early modern Spain and colonial Mexico for almost 40 years. Fernando Cervantes
One of them, Leonel de Cervantes, was among those who brought the captive indigenous leader Montezuma II to the top of the Palace of Axayacatl in the city of Tenochtitlán in an ill-fated attempt to calm Mexica crowds that had turned against the Spaniards.
“Very soon after, my ancestors began to arrive,” he said. “They were originally from Seville. It was very soon after the conquest.”
Spain’s conquistadors have gotten various reappraisals over the years, with many decrying their collective atrocities against indigenous populations. The book chronicles numerous such atrocities — including a gruesome rampage in Tenochtitlán that led to the Mexica hostility — as well as the deadly infectious diseases the invaders unwittingly brought with them, destroying indigenous populations.
The Spanish-language version of the book has attracted extra interest in the wake of President López Obrador’s call in 2019 for King Felipe VI of Spain and Pope Francis to apologize for the conquest.
“A lot of people contacted [me to ask], do I agree with the president of Mexico? Should Spain and the Vatican apologize?” Cervantes said. “It’s not really the role of the historian. I think it just promotes more polarization to do this kind of thing.”
For Cervantes, the role of a historian is to explain, not pass judgment. “Writing about such a controversial episode [as the conquest] is a good opportunity to exercise that vision of a historian,” he said.
“You have to understand, as far as possible, the context, use primary sources whenever you can,” he added.
That included Spanish and indigenous accounts, ranging from letters to Charles V by Cortés — “the most able of the conquistadors,” Cervantes calls him — to the Nahua Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, a pictorial account of the joint Spanish and indigenous conquest of what is now Guatemala.
A section on mendicant friars addresses their unexpected tolerance of indigenous religious beliefs, although sometimes they were conflicted about this, as was the case with the Virgin of Guadalupe: Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún despaired of indigenous people who saw similarities between their goddess Tonantzin and Our Lady of Guadalupe and preferred to worship the former.
Cervantes also delved into primary sources from Spain before the conquest — including chivalric romances beloved by virtually every conquistador of the era. Romances such as Sergas de Esplandián fed their belief that they were going on crusades against Islam on behalf of Christendom — a belief previously encouraged by millenarian prophecies of the reconquest of Jerusalem and the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Although early conquistadors found connections between these romances and the indigenous people they encountered, Cortés and his men struggled to compare the splendor of Tenochtitlán with anything they had previously seen in Europe.
“All were stunned by the beauty of the place,” Cervantes said. “Cortés was very keen to overstate the beauty of the place [in] writing to Charles V. He wanted to present a majestic jewel. He described to the new [Holy Roman] emperor all sorts of wonderful things.”
The route Cortés’ party took to escape Tenochtitlán. Yavidaxiu/Creative Commons
Yet, Cervantes said, “At the same time, there was evidence of the ritual sacrifices in the whole of the realm. The structure of Tenochtitlán depended on human sacrifice.”
In command of it all was Montezuma II. Cervantes reassesses the Mexica leader’s role, including his alleged passivity upon the arrival of the Spaniards and their indigenous allies.
“Go back to Montezuma’s ‘state of confusion,’ — allowing the Spaniards to move to Tenochtitlán without any opposition, allowing himself to be imprisoned in the palace of Axayacatl with many of the nobility of Tenochtitlán — in many respects, this account seems a little bit fanciful,” he said. “There must have been some kind of resistance; there must have been a degree of control that the Mexica had. Montezuma knew exactly what he was playing at.”
He notes that the indigenous emperor gained advance knowledge about a rival Spanish expedition led by Pánfilo de Narváez and exploited this information, getting Cortés to leave Tenochtitlán to deal with the arrivals. However, subsequent events outpaced Montezuma’s control.
The Spaniards remaining in the capital slaughtered Mexica preparing for the feast of Toxcatl, celebrating the indigenous god Tezcatlipoca. Cortés outmaneuvered Narváez and returned to Tenochtitlán.
Montezuma lost popular support to his brother Cuitláhuac, who was chosen to replace him as leader. He then died after sustaining wounds atop the palace of Axayacatl during a melee.
After Cortes’ return, it became clear that the tide was turning against the Spanish, and the conquistadors prepared to escape Tenochtitlán by night, part of an event known as La Noche Triste (the Night of Sorrows), in which the Spanish and their indigenous allies were attacked as they tried to flee and sustained heavy casualties.
The Mexica still had a chance to end the invasion at La Noche Triste, Cervantes believes.
“They could have finished off [the Spaniards] then and there,” he said. “Most Spaniards would have just gone back [home] after that.”
However, Cervantes said, that’s where the “character of Cortés” comes in.
“He left Tenochtitlán with knowledge of the basic weaknesses of the city. It depended on imported supplies. Stop the supplies, and it starves to death. It’s exactly what he decided to do.”
Cortés got invaluable help from indigenous communities such as the Tlaxcalans — a common story in the history of the conquistadors.
“We need to constantly remind ourselves they were not any less intelligent or any less ignorant than you and me,” Cervantes said of the conquistadors. Courtesy of Fernando Cervantes
“We would not be able to expect the conquest of Mexico or Peru with the resources the Europeans had at their disposal,” Cervantes reflected. “It would have been impossible to achieve feats like these on their own.”
The indigenous communities that sided with the Spaniards often found common cause with them, Cervantes said, citing evidence in the Lienzo de Quauhquechollan, in which the Nahua are portrayed with white skin like the Spaniards.
“Many, many indigenous societies were very keen to form alliances with the Spaniards in order to fight their enemies,” Cervantes said. “They very often identified with the Spaniards much more willingly than [with] indigenous enemies.”
As for how the conquistadors saw themselves, Cervantes said they had a very different way of looking at the world.
“We need to constantly remind ourselves they were not any less intelligent or any less ignorant than you and me,” he said. “We have to enter a conversation in their context.”
Rich Tenorio is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily.
Orange is taking over on the new stoplight risk map. Semáforo COVID-19
The number of high risk orange states has increased from nine to 15 on the federal government’s new coronavirus stoplight map, while just four states are low risk green, down from 12 on the previous one.
Thirteen states are medium risk yellow, an increase of three, but there are no red maximum risk states after the risk level in Aguascalientes was downgraded to orange.
In addition to Aguascalientes, the orange states are Baja California; Durango; Sonora; Chihuahua; Sinaloa; Nayarit; Jalisco; Colima; Zacatecas; Coahuila; Nuevo León; Tamaulipas; San Luis Potosí; and Querétaro.
The four green states are Veracruz, Tlaxcala, Chiapas and Campeche.
The new map takes effect as Mexico continues to endure an omicron-fueled fourth wave of infections. Just over 37,000 new cases were reported Friday, more than 35,000 were registered Saturday and in excess of 10,000 were added to the accumulated case tally on Sunday.
The confirmed case count passed 5 million last Wednesday and now stands at 5.15 million. Just under 183,000 cases are active, according to Health Ministry estimates.
Colima has the highest number of active cases on a per capita basis with almost 600 per 100,000 people. Baja California Sur ranks second followed by Mexico City, Nayarit and Tlaxcala.
The official COVID-19 death toll is 309,546 after more than 1,400 fatalities were reported over the past three days.
The occupancy rate for general care beds in COVID wards is 40%, the Health Ministry reported Sunday, while 27% of those with ventilators are in use.
In other COVID-19 news:
• The COVID positivity rate – the percentage of tests that come back positive – has never been so high, the director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) tweeted Saturday.
Dr. Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie, director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory at the National Autonomous University (UNAM).
Laurie Ann Ximénez-Fyvie said that 25 of Mexico’s 32 states had a positivity rate above 60% and 15 of those states had a rate above 70%.
She posted a table that showed that Quintana Roo had the highest rate at almost 88%, while five other states – Nayarit, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Colima and Baja California – also had rates above 80%.
The Harvard University-trained doctor in medical sciences also said that the positivity rate in 29 states is undergoing a “sustained increase.”
Her Twitter posts were in sharp contrast with a remark made by Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell last Tuesday. The coronavirus point man said the positivity rate was falling, a trend he asserted was a sign of a receding fourth wave.
Ximénez-Fyvie also challenged López-Gatell’s assertion that the fourth wave is on the wane.
“There is no way to argue that its declining when the positivity rate is at a ridiculously high level,” she told the newspaper El Economista.
• Mexico’s high positivity rate is largely a product of the strategy to use testing to confirm serious suspected cases of COVID rather than to stop the spread of the virus through the detection and isolation of infected people. The federal government last month advised people not to get tested unless they have essential medical reasons to do so.
The United Kingdom, for example, has conducted 6.7 million tests per million people, while France and Portugal have rates above 3 million. The United States and Canada have performed 2.7 million and 1.5 million tests per million people, respectively.
Andreu Comas García, a virologist and researcher at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí, claimed that 99% of countries around the world and 85% of those in the Americas have higher testing rates than Mexico. Testing here is not sufficient to make an accurate assessment of how the pandemic is evolving, he told El Economista.
Mexico has performed just over 110,000 tests per million people. By comparison, the U.S. and Canada have both performed more than a million tests per million people.
The former noted that there are currently more minors in hospital with COVID than at any other time in the pandemic. She also highlighted that the Pfizer vaccine is authorized for use on children as young as five in many countries around the world.
The question for the government, Ximénez-Fyvie said, is: what is the acceptable number of deaths among children for a disease that can be prevented through vaccination? The answer, she opined, should be zero.
Citing official data, Comas said that COVID is 2.4 times more lethal for children under six than influenza and 1.9 times more deadly than the respiratory syncytial virus, which is common among infants.
He challenged the government’s claims about COVID deaths among Mexican children, which number more than 800. López-Gatell said in late January that the probability of a child dying due to COVID if they’re healthy is “very, very low — approximately 274 times lower than … adults.”
Echoing Ximénez-Fyvie’s remarks, Comas said that any death from a disease preventible by vaccination is unacceptable.
• Since the beginning of the omicron wave, 72% of people who have died with COVID were aged over 60, according to an analysis conducted by UNAM researcher Héctor Hernández Bringas.
Before the omicron wave, 62% of deaths were among people above that age. The average age of a person who died with COVID in January was 67, compared to 62 before that month.
Hernández also found that the percentage of people who died with COVID during the omicron wave who had high blood pressure or diabetes was higher than before the wave began. His findings support the consensus that the highly contagious strain is less dangerous than other variants for most people. However, omicron is potentially lethal for people with underlying health conditions that make them more vulnerable to serious illness.
Teachers union members face off with police in Caltzontzin last Tuesday near the railroad tracks. Twitter @SSeguridad_Mich
National Guardsmen and state police are protecting train tracks in Michoacán after teachers belonging to the militant CNTE teachers union threatened to block the tracks near Uruapan on Monday.
The teachers, who are demanding that indigenous educator Joaquín Lázaro Márquez be appointed director of indigenous education, were urged to meet in Caltzontzin — on the outskirts of Uruapan — at 10 a.m. on Monday to burn vehicles and block the tracks, the newspaper Milenio reported.
They also planned to block the port of Lázaro Cárdenas and take over bus terminals in Zitácuaro and Morelia, the newspaper said.
Also on Monday, teacher college students staged their own protest by hijacking at least five buses on the Morelia-Pátzcuaro highway, using them as blockades to halt traffic for two hours.
Lázaro Márquez warned that the situation could deteriorate quickly. “If there is no favorable response, it’s going to get ugly … it’s going to get very ugly and I wouldn’t want that to happen,” he said, warning that if the government imposes its own choice for director Uruapan could turn into “a war zone.”
A state police officer is loaded into an ambulance after the confrontation on February 1. Twitter @SSeguridad_Mich
Lázaro said he had won the right to the post. “Since 1994 we’ve seen the amount of … corruption that existed when the directors of education were directly appointed. Then one day we decided that we would choose. Among several candidates we voted for the [one with the] best project, and in this case mine won,” he said.
Lázaro is held in high esteem in the indigenous community of Michoacán having dedicated 32 years to indigenous education, the newspaper reported. He is currently working on a project to translate the Bible from Spanish to Purépecha.
He said knowledge of Purépecha was a prerequisite for any director of indigenous education.
The teachers have also been demanding the payment of wages, consultation before any changes to pensions and jobs to be automatically awarded to teachers who have completed their training, a perennial demand by teaching students and the dissident CNTE union.
Governor Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla had appointed lawyer David Robles to be director of indigenous education, but he resigned after last week’s protests. Subsequent negotiations with the protesters broke down.
About 400 protesters from the radical wing of the CNTE union, Poder de Base (Power Base), attempted to block the tracks on February 1. At least 11 police and National Guardsmen were hurt, two of whom were seriously injured.
Blockades are a common tactic for dissatisfied teachers and teachers-to-be in Michoacán and other states: members of the CNTE blocked tracks for 91 days last year, costing businesses an estimated 50 million pesos per day (US $2.5 million at the exchange rate at the time).
The runaway truck was brought to a halt when it collided with a food stand.
The mayor of Acapulco has defended protesting students who pushed a semi-trailer toward National Guardsmen on Friday, but her defense is a novel one: there was nobody driving the vehicle and it was in neutral.
The students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college — the school attended by the 43 young men who disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014 — set the vehicle’s transmission in neutral and pushed it toward Guardsmen at the Palo Blanco toll plaza on the Autopista del Sol.
Traveling on a downhill slope, the truck steadily picked up speed, flew through a toll booth lane and crashed into a food stand. No one was injured.
At least 15 Guardsmen and 17 police were wounded in adjacent clashes at a toll plaza near Chilpancingo on the same highway, which runs between Mexico City and Acapulco.
Acapulco Mayor Abelina López said the defense of the students was legally sound.
“In strictly legal terms, the trailer was driving in neutral without a driver. There is no one to accuse because there is no evidence of who caused it … if an individual had been behind the wheel and that individual had been arrested, he could now be charged with attempted murder,” she said.
López added that the protesters should be shown leniency and justified their animosity toward authorities. “While various sectors and political actors call for … repression against the social movement, I believe in the right to protest and I ask for dialogue as the only solution … They are not criminals; there is a cause, there is pain … They must be listened to before being shouted at.”
She added that violence was part of the character of people from Guerrero. “We can not forget … our origins. To be from Guerrero is not to be just anyone,” she said.
The students have been occupying toll plazas at least twice a week for six years, the newspaper El Financiero reported. Security forces stopped them from doing so for the first time on Friday after the Senate passed a law that punishes the occupation of toll plazas with up to seven years’ imprisonment.
Ten bodies wrapped in blankets and tape were found on a street in Fresnillo on Saturday.
At least 18 homicides were recorded in Zacatecas on Saturday, the highest daily count for murders for any state so far this year.
Ten bodies were found on the street in Fresnillo, six more were discovered in a warehouse in General Pánfilo Natera and murders were perpetrated in at least two other municipalities.
Criminal groups are believed responsible for most if not all the homicides. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel are engaged in a turf war in Zacatecas, situated on a drug trafficking route between Pacific coast ports and Mexico’s northeastern border with the United States.
Residents of a community on the eastern side of Fresnillo – one of Mexico’s most violent cities – discovered 10 bodies wrapped in blankets and electrical tape early Saturday morning. The corpses were dumped on a road by armed men in pickup trucks, according to witnesses.
Federal and state security forces attended the crime scene and cordoned off the area. Some of the victims appeared to have been tortured before they were killed, authorities said. The bodies were taken to a morgue where forensic tests were to be undertaken to determine the cause of death and identity of the victims.
Zacatecas Governor David Monreal said that many of the bodies found Saturday could be members of criminal groups.
No arrests were reported in connection with the homicides and dumping of the bodies.
Later on Saturday, the cadavers of six men were found hanging in a warehouse located between the communities of San Pablo and Santa Elena in General Pánfilo Natera, a municipality about 50 kilometers east of Zacatecas city on the border with San Luis Potosí.
Zacatecas Attorney General Francisco Murillo Ruiseco said there could be a link between those murders and the arrest in the municipality of Ojocaliente last Friday of two people traveling in a vehicle with a person they had abducted.
Adding to the grim news out of Zacatecas was the murder of a man in Guadalupe, a municipality adjacent to Zacatecas city. The victim was shot dead in the center of the city.
In addition, a taxi driver was killed in an armed attack in the municipality of Calera on Saturday night.
The grisly discoveries and murders came after an upholsterer was shot and killed in his Guadalupe shop on Friday night. Saturday’s homicide count was two higher than the 16 people murdered in México state on January 24.
In November, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced that hundreds of additional troops would be deployed to Zacatecas as part of a new security plan.
The bloody start to February comes after 220 homicides were recorded in Zacatecas in December and January, a 5.7% increase compared to the same months a year earlier. The uptick occurred despite the deployment of almost 500 additional federal troops to the state as part of a new security plan announced in late November following a spate of violence.
Homicides have also increased in Michoacán since a new security plan was announced last October, whereas Jalisco and Guanajuato – both of which border Zacatecas and Michoacán and neither of which received additional federal support in late 2021 – have recorded declines in murders in recent months.
Zacatecas Governor David Monreal said Saturday that the implementation of the support plan had “generated an escalation in violence … between criminal groups that unfortunately has caused human losses such as those … in the municipalities of Fresnillo and Pánfilo Natera.”
However, he expressed confidence that peace will be achieved “sooner or later” in Zacatecas, Mexico’s eighth most violent state in 2021 with over 1,600 homicides.
“I sincerely hope that it will be sooner rather than later,” said Monreal, who took office for the ruling Morena party last September.
The former federal senator said in a video message that he was aware of the challenges he would face as governor because he took over a state going through its worst ever security crisis. The dire situation is epitomized by any number of recent macabre incidents, such as the abandonment on Kings Day of a vehicle with 10 dead bodies beneath a giant Christmas tree in front of the state government palace or the discovery of another 10 cadavers on a Zacatecas highway last November.
Monreal called on residents to trust his government, declaring that it would never give up in the fight against organized crime and continue “acting with responsibility and a lot of strength.”
President López Obrador responded to the incident on Monday, calling it an “act of provocation” directed at the government by criminals.
“[Security] will be strengthened… and lots of intelligence. Sometimes intelligence is more important than the presence of troops,” the president said.
Writing in the newspaper El Universal, security analyst Alejandro Hope asserted that reducing deadly violence in Zacatecas in a sustained way will not be possible “if the federal presence is not accompanied by a strengthening of local police forces and the building of criminal investigation capacities.”
“For now, nothing indicates that they’re heading in that direction. Therefore, having more tragic days like Saturday in the near future shouldn’t come as a surprise,” he wrote.
The accident occurred near the town of El Tintal, 73 kilometers west of Cancún.
Eight people died, including a foreign tourist, and 19 were injured after a bus collided with a dump truck on a highway near Cancún, Quintana Roo, on Sunday.
The bus, which was operated by the ADO bus line, was carrying 40 passengers on the Kantunilkin-Cancún highway from Mérida to Cancún at about 10:30 a.m. near the town of El Tintal, 73 kilometers west of Cancún, when the accident occurred.
The Quintana Roo Attorney General’s Office confirmed that five men and three women died. At least one of the fatalities was a foreign tourist, but the office didn’t reveal their nationality. Two children were injured — one seriously — and two French tourists, a German citizen and a Pakistani citizen were also hurt, the newspaper Reforma reported.
The accident occurred near section 4 of the Maya Train project that is under construction.
Authorities said Monday morning that the driver of the truck had been arrested. Witnesses say the truck drove on to the highway and into the path of the bus, whose driver didn’t have time to stop to avoid the collision.
The governor of Quintana Roo, Carlos Joaquín González, offered his condolences to those affected. “Attentive and following the accident that occurred on the Cancún-Mérida highway, where a passenger bus was involved … authorities are present and are helping the wounded. Our solidarity with the families of the victims,” he wrote on Twitter.
The Chapala axolotl/salamander (Ambystoma flavipiperatum) of Tecolotlán, Jalisco, proving that these creatures span far beyond the Mexico City area. Jesús Gordolomi Butterball RC/Creative Commons
Most Mexico City residents, as well as many tour guides and publications, will absolutely swear that the famed axolotl amphibian can only be found in what is left of the lake system now mostly destroyed by Mexico’s capital. But like so many things in Mexico, that statement is true and false.
The term “axolotl” in English is generally used for the Mexico City creature, Ambystoma mexicanum, which has lion mane-like protrusions and a wide face with a curious “smile.” It is the one endangered by the capital’s explosive growth and therefore has received the most attention by far — not to mention its very unusual ability to regenerate limbs and even vital organs to an extent.
But 16 members of Ambystoma are endemic to Mexico. Only one, Ambystoma mavortium, or the barred tiger salamander, has a range that extends into the United States and Canada.
All of them can be considered axolotls and/or salamanders but often aren’t because popular naming depends on their region and, frequently, whether the full-grown adult has the “lion’s mane” or not. If you live in one of several of Mexico’s states, you may have seen one and not even realized it because the one in your area looks little to nothing like the ones in Mexico City.
During at least some point in their development, all Ambystoma do have both lungs and gills (the lion’s mane), although depending on the species, the animal might favor one over the other. This depends on how much time the species spends on land.
The Lake Pátzcuaro species (Ambystoma_dumerilii), which is called “achoque” due to Purépecha influence. Pito22/Creative Commons
Other things all these salamanders have in common are a need to keep their skin wet, the fact that they do not shed their skin and the absence of metamorphosis seen in many other amphibians. Coloration varies even among the same species, and albinism is relatively common.
The Ambystoma with the widest range in Mexico is the plateau tiger salamander, found in México state, Puebla, Tlaxcala, Veracruz, Coahuila and Querétaro. But most, like A. mexicanum, are found only in very narrow ranges of area, often just in one small body of water.
In addition to A. mexicanum, there are other axolotls in the Valley of México and the mountains surrounding it. These include the mole axolotl (A. rivulare) in the valley proper. The granular axolotl (A. granulosum) is found only in the streams of the Iztacchihuatl, Popocatepatl and Monte Tlaloc volcanoes on the valley’s eastern edge.
Nearby is the range of A. leorai, the axolotl found only in the town of Río Frio in México state. In Puebla proper, there is the alchichica axolotl (A. taylori), named after the small volcanic lake in Tepehuayo, where it is found.
West of the Valley of México is the Sierra de las Cruces, the habitat of mountain stream axolotl (A. altamirani). Beyond these mountains is the Valley of Toluca, still in México state, where the main axolotl is the Lerma axolotl, (A. lermaense), which survives despite the wretched conditions of the Lerma River.
Also in the state is A. bombypellum, only in the municipality of Tenango del Valle. It is extremely rare.
Diagram of Ambystoma with and without gills from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Over the next set of mountains, Michoacán has several species, but as this was the territory of the Purépecha, the common name for the animal here is “achoque,” rather than the Náhuatl-derived “axolotl.”
Of these Michoacán species, the achoques of Zacapu lake’s scientific name is A. andersoni; those of Lake Pátzcuaro are A. dumerilii and those of the Tancítaro municipality are A. amblycephalum.
To the west and northwest, you’ll find the habitats of the Chapala axolotl (A. flavipiperatum), found in the Sierra de Quila in Tecolotlán, Jalisco; the Tarahumara salamander (A. rosaceum) in the Sierra Madre Occidental; and the pine axolotl (A. silvense) in the Sierra Madre Occidental of Durango.
It is true that just about all Ambystoma are at least somewhat endangered — some so critically that they are all but extinct in the wild.
The main culprit is loss of habitat. The central highlands are by far the most populated and developed part of Mexico, so pressures on land and water are enormous. A. mexicanum not only gets attention because of the capital but also because its habitat was destroyed first, over a process of drainage going on since the colonial period.
But such habitat destruction has not stopped at the Valley of México’s edges. It now extends far beyond Mexico City due to the construction of housing and roads and the pumping of water to urban areas.
Images of pigmented and albino A. mexicanum, the best known axolotl. Creative Commons
Up to 10% of natural fresh surface water in these areas has been lost, and what is left is often a highly-toxic brew of feces, chemicals and garbage that includes introduced species like carp and tilapia that prey on axolotl larvae.
As much as humans have caused the near-extinction of the axolotl, conservation efforts are the only reasons axolotls still exist. The National University of Mexico is most concerned with A. mexicanum as its habitat is very close to its main campus. For the same reason, the México State Autonomous University works with the Lerma axolotl.
But perhaps the more interesting efforts have been private. In 2019, a small sanctuary dedicated to axolotls opened in Zacatelco, Tlaxcala state. It was followed by the Museo Mexicano del Axolote (MUMAX) in 2020 in the state of Puebla.
Even more curious is the work of the nuns at the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de la Salud in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, who raise and care for over 300 of Pátzcuaro lake’s achoques. It began several decades ago because wild populations were rapidly decreasing, but their motivation was not ecological.
For over a century, the nuns have used a secretion from their skin to make a cough syrup, so a reliable supply was necessary. Today, the nuns have 300 captive animals that are the species’ best bet for survival.
Although axolotls are relatively easy to raise and can live for 10 years in captivity, releasing such populations back into the wild is not yet viable. Raised in pristine conditions, they cannot survive the shock of the polluted waters where they should be in the first place.
Two axolotl species on display at the Mexican Museum of the Axolotl in Chignahuapan, Puebla. Alejandro Linares García
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.
