Ayotzinapa teaching student faced off with police at the Palo Blanco toll plaza. Twitter
Students clashed with members of the National Guard and state police at a toll plaza near Chilpancingo, Guerrero, on Friday.
At least 14 guardsmen sustained burns from molotov cocktails and one fractured his ankle, the National Guard said.
Seventeen police were also injured, said Public Security Minister Evelio Méndez Gómez.
The confrontation occurred at the Palo Blanco toll plaza on the Autopista del Sol, the highway that runs between Mexico City and Acapulco.
Students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college – the school attended by the 43 young men who disappeared in Iguala, Guerrero, in 2014 – arrived at the plaza, located about 60 kilometers south of the Guerrero capital, with the intention of occupying it, presumably to collect tolls from motorists.
The early afternoon clash, which reportedly lasted close to an hour, occurred after security forces tried to persuade the students to leave.
The newspaper Milenio reported that the students used stones, firecrackers and molotov cocktails against the security forces.
They also traded blows with the guardsmen and police, and pushed a driverless semi-trailer toward them with the aim of injuring or intimidating them. The truck crashed into a food stand but no one was injured, the newspaper El Financiero said.
The security forces deployed tear gas to repel the students.
Five students were detained, but they were subsequently released following mediation by National Human Rights Commission officials, Méndez said. The majority of the Ayotzinapa students left the toll plaza on the same buses on which they arrived.
El Financiero reported that the students have been occupying toll plazas at least twice a week for six years. Security forces stopped them from doing so for the first time last Friday, after the Senate passed a law that punishes the occupation of toll plazas with up to seven years’ imprisonment, the newspaper said.
Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, lawyer for the parents of the missing Ayotzinapa students, announced the new commission after meeting with President Sheinbaum.
There is friction between the parents of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014 and President López Obrador over the former’s request for the army to be investigated in connection with the crime, according to a lawyer for the victims’ families.
The lawyer, Vidulfo Rosales Sierra, also said that the federal government has begun intimidating the Ayotzinapa students’ parents, explaining that buses in which they were traveling on a Guerrero highway were stopped by the National Guard Tuesday and subsequently followed as they made their way to Acapulco.
He said that every time the parents advocate a thorough investigation into the army in connection with the events of September 26 and 27 of 2014, the government is annoyed at the prospect.
Leaked testimony from a protected witness that was obtained by the newspaper Reforma last year supported the belief that the army played a part in the crime that triggered mass protests and rattled the government led by former president Enrique Peña Nieto.
One theory is that the students’ bodies were burned in army incinerators after they were killed.
Rosales said that friction has been evident at meetings between the parents and López Obrador and other government officials over “the Mexican army issue.”
“When it’s placed on the table, they don’t like it, it causes disagreement so that’s caused friction,” he said.
The lawyer said the animosity between the two parties was regrettable and that no progress has been made on the case in recent months.
Upon taking office in late 2018, López Obrador vowed to establish the truth about what happened to the 43 students, but the remains of just three of the young men have been found and identified, and the current government, while disavowing its predecessor’s so-called “historical truth,” hasn’t provided its own definitive version of events.
Querétaro Governor Mauricio Kuri does a COVID-safe handshake with a San Juan del Río resident on Thursday while in town to announce the public works package. Government of Querétaro
The state of Querétaro will invest a billion pesos (US $48 million) in infrastructure projects, its governor announced on Wednesday.
The money will go toward road improvements throughout the state, including bridges to improve connectivity and road repairs in various neighborhoods of the capital, Queretaro city.
A large portion of the funding — 300 million pesos — will go toward building the Santa Barbara Viaduct in the municipality of Corregidora, west of the capital. The viaduct will facilitate travel between Querétaro city and Celaya, Guanajuato.
The state minister of public works said the Santa Barbara Viaduct will serve up to 150,000 vehicles daily, improving traffic circulation and reducing pollution.
The spending package also includes a new municipal slaughterhouse for the Ezequiel Montes municipality, a remodeled market for Jalpan de Serra and improvements to the Panamerican Highway in the municipality of Pedro Escobedo.
“All these projects have a great social impact and are tailored to the needs of the people; they are works that are visible, palpable and will change the lives of thousands of Querétaro residents,” Governor Mauricio Kuri said.
According to the World Health Organization, up to 10 billion of the 15 billion cigarettes sold daily are disposed of in the environment, and a 2011 research paper says the butts contain a wide variety of chemicals, over 50 of which are known to be carcinogenic to human beings.
Unfortunately, the filters on these cigarette butts are really tough and won’t disintegrate for as much as 15 years. During all that time, their toxic ingredients are leached into the soil or water with serious consequences.
In 2021 a Mexican company called Eco Filter inaugurated a plant in Guadalajara dedicated to detoxifying and recycling huge quantities of cigarette butts collected by volunteers all over the nation. How they do it and how they got started make for a fascinating story.
In 2012, National Autonomous University biologist Leopoldo Benítez was working on his thesis and looking for something that could break down cigarette butts.
The Eco Filter partners: Leopoldo Benítez, Eduardo Solís and Paola Garro.
He went on a field trip to Michoacán, where he spotted oyster mushrooms growing on a log. He decided to bring a few samples back to his university lab in Iztacala, México state.
“This fungus breaks down wood, which is cellulose,” he reasoned. “So it should do the same job on cigarette filters.” More than 90% of the world’s cigarettes use cellulose acetate filters.
Next, he presented the idea to his teacher and started carrying out tests. What he found was that the fungus, Pleurotus ostreatus, not only broke down the cellulose but also neutralized the toxic substances in the cigarette filters.
How does it do this? Engineer Eduardo Solís of Eco Filter explained it to me.
“The toxic substances in the cigarette butt are hydrocarbons, and the fungus produces enzymes that attack the bonds between carbon and hydrogen. So if we have a long chain, it gets broken down into simpler substances that the fungus can introduce into its metabolism without any problems. And that’s how it degrades all those chemical substances present in cigarette butts.”
Excited by what he had found, Benítez teamed up with Paola Garro of the Technological University of Mexico (UNITEC), who suggested that they start a project to give “a second life” to cigarette butts, turning them into useful materials.
“Mmm, smells good!” Once mixed with the fungus, the chemicals in the cigarette butts break down into simple elements after about 28 days.
The pair announced their findings on social media and set up a network of representatives (whom they call Eco Filter Ambassadors) all over Mexico to get local people to collect cigarette butts. In 2019, they started a pilot plant to turn them into useful cellulose in México state.
The process worked well, and word of their success spread.
It spread not only among environmentalists but also came to the attention of Philip Morris México, who liked the work being done by these young Mexicans to resolve a problem that the tobacco industry had been unable to deal with.
With Philip Morris’ assistance, they made plans to build a much larger plant — the first of its kind in Latin America. It was inaugurated in Guadalajara in July 2021.
Thanks to the help of one of Eco Filter’s 500 ambassadors, I was able to pay a visit to the newly opened plant, which is located on a quiet street just south of Guadalajara International Airport.
I was impressed by the fact that the personnel there looked and spoke more like university professors than operators of an industrial plant. I was even more impressed when every one of them accompanied us throughout our tour of the building, answering our questions and contributing to the conversation with anecdotes and insights. It was unlike any factory tour I’ve ever been on.
A participant in a colillatón, or “butt-a-thon,” picks up cigarette butts in Guadalajara’s Plaza Tapatía. Louisette Chacón
We started out in front of an enormous bin filled to the top with plastic bottles full of butts.
“Here,” Solís said, “we receive millions of cigarette butts (colillas in Spanish) every month, and in this new plant, we now have the capacity to process up to 10 tons of them every year.”
“We have a tendency,” he added, “to ignore the presence of cigarette butts on the ground, but if you start to look for them, you will find them everywhere. To get people to collect them, our ambassadors organize “colillatones” all over Mexico.”
Colillatón is a made-up word that could be translated as “butt-a-thon” in English. The event gets large numbers of people off their bottoms and outdoors, walking about and continuously bending over to pick up cigarette butts — wearing gloves, of course.
“These colillatones,” Hilda Margarita Castro of Eco Filter said, “really open people’s eyes. They begin to notice just how many cigarette butts are lying on the ground all around us. There are billions of them! One participant said, ‘I walked along the curb of just one city block and I found 280 colillas! I couldn’t believe it! I follow that very same sidewalk every day … but I never noticed them!’
“Other people say things like, ‘I’m a smoker, and I decided to start putting my cigarette butts in a bottle. Well, I couldn’t believe how quickly that bottle was full!’ After filling two or three bottles, people start to think, ‘Wow, I’m spending a lot of money on cigarettes that I could be spending on something else!’”
Dressed in hazmat clothing and breathing through a special filter, a worker cuts open plastic bottles to collect the carcinogenic cigarette butts. Eco Filter
Next, we went to the room where the cigarette butts are removed from the plastic bottles and dumped into trash containers. The people who do this work, said our guides, are obliged to wear hazmat suits equipped with special filters for breathing.
If you think one cigarette butt is stinky, imagine what a whole trash can full of them smells like!
The bottles, our guides commented, sometimes contain surprises, such as chicken bones and fingernails.
From this small room, we proceeded to the incubation racks where the ground-up mycelium of the oyster fungus is mixed with the cigarette butts.
This mycelium consists of long, fine, white threads like those found under the surface of every forest on Earth, serving as a communication network among the trees. A fungus is really mycelium, and mushrooms are its fruit.
“If we see mushrooms popping up in these containers,” Solís told us, “it means we’ve let the process go on too long.”
These planters made from recycled cigarette butts are biodegradable and can be placed directly into a hole in the garden. Eco Filter
Normally, it takes 25 to 30 days for the mighty mycelium to completely wipe out all toxins and degrade the cellulose filters by about 30%.
I was amazed how pleasant a trash can full of detoxified cigarette butts could smell. “Como tierra mojada,” said Solís with a smile. “Like damp soil after a spring rain.”
The now harmless cigarette butts are then dried and next passed through a screen to sift out the cellulose filters that are finally shredded into raw material that can be used as industrial fiber to make concrete stronger or made into paper, notebooks, insulation, flower pots or even earrings.
To find out more about Eco Filter and becoming one of their cigarette butt recycling ambassadors, visit them on their website Para Bien o Para Mal (For Better or For Worse) or on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
Now rendered harmless, the cellulose filters are separated from the mycelium.
In nature, the oyster fungus attacks dead trees, turning them into soil. Jean-Pol Grandmont
The stench coming from a container full of cigarette butts is overwhelming.
The results of a successful “butt-a-thon.” Eco Filter
Eco Filter’s new plant, located near Guadalajara’s international airport, can process up to 10 tons of cigarette butts per year.
“At the end of the process,” says Hilda Margarita Castro, “we have raw cellulose, which can be used for a variety of purposes.”
Every year, 50 billion cigarette butts are tossed to the ground in Mexico. Eco Filter
The army's Sand Cat was a total loss, but thanks to the vehicle's armor, no soldiers died in the blast.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is now using land mines in its fight against official security forces in Michoacán.
One explosive that detonated last Saturday damaged an armored army vehicle and injured 10 soldiers.
The mines used by the CJNG – generally considered Mexico’s most powerful criminal organization – are similar to those deployed by Iraqi insurgents and organizations such as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in wars against the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past two decades, although not as powerful, the newspaper Milenio reported.
The army defused 12 handmade mines on Wednesday in the municipality of Tepalcatepec, located in the notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region where the CJNG is engaged in a turf war with the Cárteles Unidos.
Security sources cited by Milenio said the explosives consist of pipes filled with gunpowder, two-millimeter-thick pieces of metal, batteries, a detonator and other items. The pipe bombs, concealed under dirt or other organic materials, explode upon contact.
One such land mine exploded Saturday when an army Sand Cat vehicle drove over it, Milenio reported. Its armor allowed the soldiers to avoid life-threatening injuries.
Aerial footage of the vehicle, still smoking after the mine explosion.
Security officials who spoke with Milenio said they suspect a “technical advisor” is guiding the CJNG in its use of new technologies.
Daniel Castillo Santander, an academic who specializes in organized crime, compared the Jalisco cartel’s tactics to those used against the United States military in Iraq in the first decade of the century.
“Let’s remember what happened to the United States army, the greatest military power; when it went into Iraq, when they said ‘we’ve won the war, we don’t have any visible enemy,’ the insurgents started to adapt, to generate new tactics and they made these mines. … What’s happening in Michoacán? The [CJNG] is adapting very cheap technologies to hold back the military presence in the region,” he told Milenio.
“What do you create? It’s not so much the impact of saying ‘I destroyed three cars,’ but rather … the psychological terror that a drone … [with] dynamite … or putting mines on the road creates,” Castillo said.
The CJNG is one of the fastest growing and most dominant criminal organizations in Mexico, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
“CJNG has a significant presence in 23 of the 32 Mexican states. … The CJNG’s rapid expansion of its drug trafficking activities is characterized by the group’s willingness to engage in violent confrontations with Mexican government security forces and rival cartels,” the DEA said in its 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment, published in March 2021.
The federal government is seeking to undermine the autonomy of the National Electoral Institute (INE) by cutting its budget, the organization’s president asserted Thursday.
Addressing the online Global Elections Day Summit 2022, organized by the Association of European Election Officials, Lorenzo Córdova said Mexico is currently going through a period of intolerance toward the electoral authority, whose budget for 2022 was slashed by almost 5 billion pesos (US $241.6 million).
President López Obrador is an outspoken critic of the INE, and has indicated that he will submit a bill to Congress to overhaul it.
Córdova, who has charged that the INE is facing unprecedented hostility, told the summit that a reduction in its funding places the institute’s capacity to defend democracy at risk.
“… These unusual budget cuts … in many cases compromise the technical capacities and responsibilities of electoral authorities,” he said.
Córdova speaking at the Global Elections Day Summit 2022, an online event. Screenshot
“Added to that are electoral reforms that seek to increase controls over autonomous and independent authorities,” Córdova said, offering an assessment of the situation in Mexico and other countries where he believes electoral organizations are under attack.
“… It’s particularly disturbing that these attacks … even threaten the personal safety of public officials in charge of electoral institutions, as is happening in Peru, and also in Mexico,” the INE chief said.
Córdova – who has clashed with López Obrador on several occasions – noted that the attacks in some countries on electoral authorities are ironically perpetrated by “those who won [elections] and benefited from electoral processes.”
Despite the apparent animosity from AMLO, as the president is best known, and the budget cuts it has suffered, the INE is still fulfilling its mandate, he said.
“We’re committed to democracy and we’ll continue working hard to carry out free, fair, competitive and impartial elections, organized with all the professionalism that characterizes us in Mexico,” Córdova said.
His remarks came a week after he warned National Action Party (PAN) lawmakers to be wary of any efforts by the government to exert pressure on the country’s electoral authorities.
“Be careful with a reform that, under the pretext of rescuing the autonomy of electoral authorities, includes greater political controls, given that via these controls pressure could be exerted on [state and federal] electoral authorities,” he said at a meeting of PAN deputies.
Baillères was awarded the Belisario Domínguez medal in 2015 in recognition of his entrepreneurship and philanthropy.
Billionaire businessman Alberto Baillères González, dubbed King Midas and “the silver king” for his lucrative mining interests, has died at the age of 90.
The tycoon and philanthropist, Mexico’s fourth richest person with a net worth of some US $9 billion, passed away in Mexico City on Wednesday, according to a statement issued by his conglomerate Grupo Bal. The cause of death was not given.
His passing comes less than a year after he stepped down as head of Grupo Bal, a conglomerate of at least 15 companies with interests in a range of sectors including mining, retail, insurance, finance and beverages.
Among Baillères’ best known companies are mining firms Peñoles and Fresnillo, the department store chain Palacio de Hierro, the insurer GNP and the asset manager and stockbroker ValMex.
After Mexico’s energy sector was opened up to foreign and private companies by the previous federal government, he founded Petrobal – Mexico’s first private oil company in decades, according to business intelligence service BNamericas.
President López Obrador acknowledged the nonagenarian’s passing at his regular news conference on Friday morning.
“I want to express my deepest condolences for the death of Alberto Baillères,” he said.
“… We spent time together, he invited me to dine at his home, we talked about the situation in the country, we didn’t always agree but we always maintained a relationship of respect.”
Indeed, the magnate advised at least some of his employees not to vote for López Obrador in the 2018 presidential election due to fears about what the leftist would do to the Mexican economy.
Born in Mexico City in 1931, Baillères attended a military boarding school in the United States as a teenager before studying economics at the Autonomous Technical Institute of Mexico (ITAM), a private university founded by his father, Raúl Baillères, who left Guanajuato at the age of 19 in search of opportunities in the capital and became a highly successful businessman.
A young Alberto worked in the banking sector while he studied in the 1950s, becoming a branch manager of the state-owned Banco de Comercio while still an undergraduate.
Baillères speaks at a Palacio de Hierro opening in Veracruz in 2019.
He joined the brewery Cervecería Moctezuma as a beer salesman toward the end of that decade, rising to the position of head of sales in the Mexico City metropolitan area before becoming the company’s general director in 1964. He also ascended to the helm of Palacio de Hierro in the 1960s and came up with the exclusive department store’s catchy yet much-mocked slogan, Soy totalmente Palacio (I’m completely Palacio).
His father died in 1967 after an accident, leaving him in charge of many of the companies that are now part of Grupo Bal.
In addition to a great love and talent for business, Baillères had a passion for education, the arts, bullfighting, horse racing and hunting. He was chairman of the board of trustees at ITAM for decades and a major donor to the university, where many prominent businesspeople and politicians studied.
“His academic legacy at ITAM is invaluable,” said José Antonio Meade, a former federal cabinet minister and presidential candidate who studied at the university. “He transformed each and every sector and life he touched.”
Baillères was also a patron of the arts and the owner of bullrings in Spain and Mexico, and cattle ranches in those two countries as well as the United States.
“I love nature, but given my core business activities, ranch life has not been my main activity,” he told the San Antonio Business Journal in an interview late last year.
Alberto Baillères’ son Alejandro took over the family business after his father’s retirement in 2021.
According to the Grupo Bal statement announcing his death, Baillères will be remembered as a “visionary businessman, exemplary Mexican [and] a romantic dreamer who triumphed and exceeded his goals.”
His wealth increased significantly between 2000 and 2012 when the conservative National Action Party was in power and he was granted mining concessions across large tracts of land, the news agency Bloomberg reported.
In addition to managing his own companies, he served on the boards of other large firms, including Chase Bank in the 1970s.
In 2015, he was awarded the Belisario Domínguez medal, the Mexican Senate’s highest honor, in recognition of his entrepreneurship and philanthropy.
At a ceremony attended by then-president Enrique Peña Nieto, the businessman said that his father had instilled a great affection for his homeland in him, and declared that his “two great loves in life” were his family and “my beloved Mexico.”
Baillères also affirmed that he had always held the belief that “material wealth is a means, not an end.”
“And when this wealth is invested in the country, it becomes a social instrument that benefits everyone,” he said.
Despite being one of Mexico’s most prominent businessmen, Baillères preferred to avoid the limelight, although he sometimes hosted and attended high-profile parties and events.
He was married to Teresa Gaul, with whom he had seven children. Alejandro Baillères took over as Grupo Bal chief when his father retired in April 2021 after more than half a century at the conglomerate’s helm.
A sack of olive ridley turtle eggs collected by the writer and other volunteers at Campamento Tortuguero Ayotlcalli.
Campamento Tortuguero Ayotlcalli (Ayotlcalli Turtle Encampment) is a nonprofit sea turtle sanctuary located just outside of Zihuatanejo on Playa Blanca and founded by Gene and Darius Marin-Smith in 2011. Over the years, it has grown to be one of the most important conservation organizations in the area, with programs aimed at creating awareness about preserving the three types of local turtles they seek to help: the olive ridley; the black turtle, or prieta; and the largest marine turtle in the world, the leatherback.
Intrigued by the idea and with little knowledge other than I would be expected to ride on an ATV from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m., I decided this was something I needed to experience.
David Hollingsworth, a longtime volunteer with the sanctuary, would be my guide for the evening. Turns out that David knows a lot about turtles, and he filled me in on the ride to the sanctuary.
The first thing I learned was that January was not the typical high season for turtles to nest, but August to November. He warned me that we might not see any action at all tonight, nor find any nests.
This prieta tortoise must make it to a safe spot far away enough from shore to lay her eggs, then have enough energy to make it back to the sea. Campamento Tortuguero Ayotlcalli
The second thing I learned was that should we come upon poachers robbing nests or stealing turtles, we were not to interfere. I must confess that although I could see the wisdom of this, I was secretly disappointed — a part of me had visions of swooping in and scaring away the bad guys.
Thirdly, Hollingsworth gave me a quick lesson on how they record and track the turtles. In addition to writing down the information by hand, they have an app, which gives the organization the very latest in technology.
The app records the date and time, GPS coordinates, the name of the beach where the nests are found and the species of turtle. There are a host of other details as well, such as how many eggs are found and whether the sanctuary has already tagged the turtle in question. It will even tell you if this particular turtle has been on this beach before. The last thing he told me was that, even with our intervention, only one in 1,000 turtles would make it to the Gulf Stream.
By the time we arrived at the sanctuary, I was already impressed by how turnkey and scientific the entire system was.
The first thing we did was check our supplies box containing contain tags, pliers, rubber gloves – because you are never to touch eggs or turtles with your bare hands. There were also poles for prodding the ground looking for eggs, measuring tape, bags to carry the eggs and a cooler to keep safe the ones we found. Then we gassed the ATVs.
I would ride with David, and the second would be driven by Fernando a local and valuable volunteer with the organization, and with founder Marin-Smith who had both arrived just as we finished checking the gear.
Along with Marin-Smith, we checked the egg “corral,” for any turtles that had hatched in the last few hours. We found an olive ridley turtle and recorded the info before releasing him into the ocean.
I was surprised to learn that the corral was checked every few hours, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a huge manpower commitment and another reason why volunteers are so important to the organization.
Turtles are released within hours of hatching at this sanctuary, which surprised me since I remember that some resorts with turtle programs would keep them in buckets for days before releasing them.
Marin-Smith explained, “Turtles eat their meals from the yolk of their eggs. And they do not eat again until they swim a very long way to the Gulf Stream. All their energy goes into that swim. If they are left too long in captivity, they are using up vital energy needed for the trip. Many will simply run out of energy and not make it to their destination.”
I also learned that they needed to be released at the same stretch of beach on which they were hatched so that their memory would be imprinted in the sand and that they would know where to return when it was time to lay their eggs
By this time, it was 11:15 p.m. and time to head out.
Volunteer David Hollingsworth prods the sand, looking for where the turtle has laid its eggs.
Almost immediately, Marin-Smith and Fernando spotted the signs of a nest. Even when we stopped and they pointed it out to me, it was difficult for me to differentiate the tracks of endless ATVs from the sweeping tracks that a turtles flipper makes in the sand.
But after some poking and prodding with a stick to test the site, we found a nest. I was invited to help dig with a gloved hand the 45 centimeters or so it takes to find the eggs and it was as much fun as an Easter egg hunt. In all, we dug out 91 olive ridley turtle eggs.
This nest was adopted by someone, and so the information recorded was different. We also took photos of the dig, which they would send to the “parents” to update them via email on the progress of their turtles. After handwriting the information and placing it into the bag with the eggs for reference, we were off.
We hoped to cross over to the lagoon, which had been impassable the night before because of tides but tonight, we were in luck.
Once again, thanks to my guides’ eagle eyes, we found tracks to the right. About 10 yards, in we stopped the vehicles and turned off the lights. “We think there is a turtle up ahead,” Marin-Smith told me as we followed the tracks on foot.
They could identify the species, a Prieta — otherwise known as a black turtle — by its prints. In a short while, but quite a distance from the surf, we found her busy digging or covering — it was hard to tell at first. Her powerful flippers flung the sand around.
She was untagged, so Fernando straddled her back carefully and tagged each flipper. He also measured her, not an easy task as she moved out of the nest.
I asked whether she had already laid her eggs or if we had disturbed her and if so, what would happen. Marin-Smith explained that if we had disturbed her during the laying process, she would do any number of things: either move away and try to lay somewhere else or else return to the sea and come back another time.
Our turtle chose to move away back toward from where had come. We let her go. It was time now to check the nest. Our new mother had laid 52 eggs.
The next step was to follow the turtle and see if she had made it to the ocean. Once again, Fernando’s extraordinary eyes picked up the right track, and we found our turtle still quite a distance from where she needed to be. The lights of the neighborhood were distracting her. Instead of heading out, she was moving inland. At this slow “turtle’s pace,” it could be hours before she reached the water, and her energy was waning fast.
Luckily, David and Fernando could lift her — she weighed about 100 pounds — and walk a few yards at a time. But it was plain to see that she was attracted by the lights, and she kept turning away from the ocean.
I remarked that since the turtle kept moving towards the light offshore why couldn’t we shine our flashlights in the direction of where we wanted her to go. Surprisingly, my naive suggestion worked. Finally, after a considerable time, we watched her enter the ocean. If we had not come upon her when we did, it might have been hours before she found her way, and by that time, she would have been exhausted and dangerously dry.
A mother prieta turtle takes a rest on the beach.
“We have tried to get residents and businesses along this stretch of beach to dim their lights by using softer wattage, but so far, everyone is reluctant to do so — mainly because of security reasons. But it would make it so much easier for the turtles and us if they did.”
After recording all the info and storing the eggs in the cooler, we backtracked and dropped the eggs at the sanctuary before continuing towards Barra de Potosi, a small fishing village. A short while later, we found another nest, this time an olive ridley, and dug up another 84 eggs. I was thrilled that we had managed to not only find three nests in one night but that I had witnessed a turtle’s tagging and her return to the ocean. It was 2:30 a.m.
Once back at the sanctuary, we dug three holes, one for each nest we had found. While Marin-Smith used her phone app to record the information, Hollingsworth and Fernando buried the eggs.
A quick check in the corral turned up three more hatched turtles, which were promptly released. We were now free to go home — two sleeping volunteers in the bunkhouse would take over in a few hours.
Weary but mostly exhilarated, we headed back to Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo for a good night’s rest — or what was left of it.
I highly recommend this experience, which costs a minimum donation of US $25 per person and you can book by contacting the shelter. You can also donate to the sanctuary or adopt a turtle in your or someone else’s name. You can join in on a turtle release. Donation required.
To learn more, visit Campamento Tortuguero Ayotlcalli’s website or Facebook page, contact them on Twitter at @Ayotlcalli, or email them. They also can be reached by phone in Zihuatanejo at 755 121 1021 or in the United States at (281) 235 8974.
The writer divides her time between Canada and Zihuatanejo.
Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue along with political and business leaders gather around a prototype Halcón 2 at at a press event. Horizontec/Facebook
A Mexican aircraft manufacturer is investing more than US $10 million in a new plant at the Celaya airport.
Horizontec will make its Halcón 2 two-seater light plane at its new manufacturing facility in the southeastern Guanajuato municipality. The news website AM said the light sport category aircraft is “the first completely Mexican plane.”
“Having a home means being able to continue with our development,” said Horizontec CEO Giovanni Angelucci Carrasco at an event Wednesday to mark the start of construction.
“It hasn’t been easy to get here … but I believe we’re an example of resilience and that’s what is needed to achieve projects of this magnitude,” he said.
He said Wednesday that the 100% Mexican built and designed Halcón 2, which measures seven meters in length and has a wingspan of 9.4 meters, is apt for pilot training, recreational flights and aerial surveillance.
Guanajuato Governor Diego Sinhue said the installation of Horizontec at the Celaya airport will strengthen the aerospace industry in the Bajío region state, where parts for companies such as Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier and Gulfstream are made. Aerospace exports from Guanajuato were worth US $5.8 million in 2020, he said.
Horizontec is one of 13 companies that belong to a group known as the Bajío Aerospace Cluster, of which Angelucci is vice president.
“Guanajuato’s aerospace industry continues to strengthen and grow, we’re making progress. Our thanks to Horizontec for making history in Guanajuato,” Sinhue said.
Domestic workers lined up outside the social security institute to sign up for benefits when they became available in 2019 after the Supreme Court ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that domestic workers must must have access to social security benefits like any other worker, but only 3% actually do, according to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).
Belén Sanz Luque, Mexico representative of UN Women, said that 97% of Mexico’s 2.2 million domestic workers – most of whom are women – are employed informally and don’t receive benefits such as health care and paid vacations.
“It’s concerning that not all domestic workers have their work rights guaranteed,” she said.
Salaries for such workers, commonly known as muchachas, remain low. Sanz told the newspaper Reforma that the 3% of maids who are employed formally earn an average of 206 pesos (US $10) per day.
To raise awareness about domestic workers’ rights in Mexico, the United Nations has launched a campaign called “Es lo justo” (It’s only fair).
“We’re seeking to generate awareness about the situation in which domestic workers live,” Sanz said, noting that their employers have a legal obligation to guarantee access to social security benefits.
