The new banknote celebrates Mexican history with Mexica symbols and an image of a native salamander. Banxico
A new 50-peso bill featuring the Mexica capital of Tenochtitlán on one side and an axolotl on the other is now in circulation.
The Bank of México announced Thursday that the newest member of the new family of banknotes had been released. The central bank had previously issued new 500, 200,100 and 20-peso bills.
In the foreground of the obverse side of the new, purple-colored polymer 50-peso note is an image of the rear view of the Teocalli of the Sacred War, a stone miniature of a Mexica, or Aztec, temple that was carved on the orders of Moctezuma II, the tlatoani, or ruler, of Tenochtitlán when the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century.
The rear side of the pre-Hispanic monolith, which is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, features an eagle perched on a nopal, or prickly pear cactus, with an Atl tlachinolli in its beak. An Atl tlachinolli is a Mexica symbol of water and fire, or war.
Below the image of the monolith appear the words: “Foundation of Tenochtitlán, representing the historical period of old Mexico.”
In the background of the obverse side is a representation of Tenochtitlán based on a section of a mural by Diego Rivera, the acclaimed 20th century Mexican artist.
Tenochtitlán, upon which Mexico City was built, means “place where prickly pears abound” in Náhuatl. It was founded by the Mexica people in 1325 on an island located on Lake Texcoco. The legend goes that they decided to build a city on the island because they saw the omen they were seeking there: an eagle devouring a snake while perched on a nopal.
The reverse side of the new 50-peso bill features an axolotl, a species of salamander endemic to the waterways of the Mexico City borough of Xochimilco. In the background are chinampas, or floating gardens, where corn is being grown, ahuejotes, or native willow trees, and a boat on the surface of a Xochimilco canal.
A dragonfly hovers above the axolotl, known in Mexico as an ajolote. Below it appear the words: “Ecosystem of rivers and lakes, with the ajolote and corn in Xochimilco in Mexico City, World Heritage site.”
The new note also features a transparent window in the form of an Ollin, a Mexica symbol representative of movement. In addition, it has a range of other security features that make it difficult to forge, as well as raised text that can help blind and visually impaired people identify it.
Journalist Fredy López was a former Central America correspondent for El Universal and El Financiero.
A veteran journalist was shot and killed in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, on Thursday, becoming the ninth journalist to be murdered in Mexico this year.
A lone gunman shot Fredy López Arévalo, a former Central America correspondent for the newspapers El Universal and El Financiero, at the door of his home at approximately 8:00 p.m. The aggressor subsequently fled on a motorcycle.
The 57-year-old journalist, a Chiapas native who was the editor of a local magazine and a radio presenter before his death, returned to San Cristóbal with his wife and children on Thursday evening after celebrating his mother’s birthday in Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
The Chiapas Attorney General’s Office said Friday that police and forensic experts attended the scene of the crime and found the lifeless body of López, who suffered a single gunshot wound.
“The state Attorney General’s Office regrets this reprehensible act and affirms its commitment to continuing with the investigations until the facts are clarified,” it said.
Chiapas Governor Rutilio Escandón condemned “the cowardly murder” and pledged that it won’t go unpunished.
“Investigations are underway. My solidarity with his family and friends,” he wrote on Twitter.
López had a long career in journalism, starting as a newspaper reporter in Chiapas at the age of 21. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he covered events in Central America including the first International Conference on Central American Refugees in Guatemala City in 1989 and the defeat of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas at the 1990 general election in Nicaragua.
López also reported on monumental events in Mexico such as the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas.
His killing followed the murders earlier this year of the journalists Benjamín Morales Hernández in Sonora, Gustavo Sánchez in Oaxaca, Enrique García in México state, Saúl Tijerina in Coahuila, Abraham Mendoza in Michoacán, Ricardo López in Sonora, Jacinto Romero in Veracruz and Manuel González in Morelos.
At least eight journalists were killed in Mexico last year, which made the country the most dangerous in the world for journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders.
In the first half of 2021, individuals and companies in the Mexican media were victims of 362 acts of aggression, according to the press freedom advocacy organization Article 19.
The forensic cemetery of the Regional Center of Human Identification.
Authorities in Coahuila have exhumed more than 700 bodies since last year as they seek to identify victims of a narco war who were not identified before they were buried in common graves.
Victims of a turf war between Los Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel, most of them men aged 30 to 40 who were buried more than a decade ago, have been removed from more than 450 graves.
The number of exhumed bodies is expected to rise as authorities dig up more mass graves at cemeteries in the northern border state.
Yeska Garza Ramírez, coordinator-general of the Regional Center of Human Identification, told the newspaper Milenio that authorities are currently undertaking their fifth mass exhumation campaign.
“… We expect to recover at least 750 bodies in the southeast region and the Laguna region,” she said.
The Laguna region is the Comarca Lagunera, a region that extends across southwestern Coahuila and northeastern Durango.
Garza said that authorities will soon begin additional exhumations in other parts of Coahuila, a state where the notoriously violent Zetas cartel had near complete control between 2007 and 2013, according to a 2017 binational report.
Of the more than 700 bodies exhumed since last year, just seven have been identified and handed over to the victims’ families.
The majority are still at the Regional Center of Human Identification, a federal government facility in state capital Saltillo.
Garza said the center has approximately 1,700 DNA samples from members of some 900 families. Those samples are being compared with DNA collected from the remains of exhumed bodies, she said.
The establishment of the identification center, which began operations last year, and authorities’ ongoing attempts to identify victims of violence provide hope to families seeking to find out what happened to their missing loved ones.
“Having the human identification center here in the state with its headquarters in Saltillo is an achievement not of the state nor of the authorities but of the families [of missing people] because we’ve constantly placed pressure [on the government],” said Juan Humberto Morales, member of a Piedras Negras-based collective of family members of missing people.
The exhumed bodies “are our family members,” said Morales, whose father disappeared in Piedras Negras 11 years ago. “We have to give them their name and let them go with their families.”
The president of a nightclub owners association said that clubs should refrain from playing music that encourages a sexualized style of dancing known as perreo, or twerking.
Bars and nightclubs shouldn’t play reggaeton or other styles of music that encourage violence and a lack of respect for women, according to the head of an association of nightclub owners in Morelos.
Humberto Arriaga Cardoza, president of the ADICE nightclub owners association, recommended that bars and nightclubs in the state capital of Cuernavaca remove such music from their playlists.
“It’s just a recommendation; it will be up to the owners of nightclubs and bars to pay attention to the musical preferences [of their establishments] because the lyrics [of reggaeton] encourage a lot of things such as violence [against women] and … femicides,” he said.
Arriaga also said that nightclubs and bars should turn off music that encourages a sexualized style of dancing known as perreo, or twerking.
He said he agreed with Mexican singer-songwriter Aleks Syntek, who has been highly critical of reggaeton for generating a culture of disrespect for women.
BAD BUNNY - YO PERREO SOLA | YHLQMDLG (Video Oficial)
Yo perreo sola, or I twerk alone, by recording artist Bad Bunny.
Originating in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, the music style is popular around the world, especially in Latin America. Among the best known reggaeton artists are Daddy Yankee, Bad Bunny and Maluma.
Arriaga said that his recommendation is not directed at members of the association he heads because they don’t play music that incites violence and fosters disrespect for women. He said he wanted all bar and nightclub owners to be more responsible to avoid damaging the reputation of Cuernavaca and frightening off Mexican and foreign tourists.
“We must recover the status we [previously] had because as citizens we watch the downfall of the municipality with sadness,” he said.
That remark referred to violence in recent years in the Morelos capital, located about 80 kilometers south of Mexico City.
Arriaga also said that the coronavirus pandemic has taken a heavy toll on entertainment venues in Cuernavaca.
“Unfortunately there’s no night life [at the moment]. The majority of the traditional discos closed their doors due to the pandemic but the idea is that the city will have that [economic] activity again. Now that [mayor-elect] José Urióstegui Salgado is coming in we hope that there is a strong recovery,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of tourists are expected for Day of the Dead in Michoacán.
Despite the ongoing pandemic, at least 250,000 tourists are expected to travel to Michoacán for Day of the Dead celebrations.
The municipalities of Pátzcuaro, Tzintzuntzan, Erongarícuaro and Quiroga are preparing for an influx of visitors, according to the newspaper Milenio.
The state government said that strict health measures will be in place to prevent the spread of the coronavirus at cemeteries that are popular with Day of the Dead tourists.
Michoacán, one of the country’s most popular Day of the Dead destinations, has recorded more than 72,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic and over 7,800 COVID-19 deaths.
In other COVID-19 news:
• The Health Ministry reported 4,797 new cases and 386 additional COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday. Mexico’s accumulated tallies are currently 3.79 million and 287,274, respectively. Estimated active cases number 28,700.
• More than 118.8 million vaccine doses have now been administered after over 793,000 shots were given Wednesday. Four in five Mexicans have received at least one shot.
In Nilchi, Campeche, an ancient Maya Day of the Dead tradition of caring for the bones of the departed is still practiced but is slowly fading into obscurity. photos by Underhemp Balloo
“Day of the Dead here is not the way it used to be — Nilchí is not the way it used to be.”
Lucía Peniche has lived in the old hacienda town of Nilchí, 35 kilometers east of the city of Campeche, since she was born. Growing up, she took part in the annual Day of the Dead celebrations, notable for its bone washing tradition and for the culinary and social festival which took place around the start of November. These days, however, celebrating Day of the Dead is a muted affair here.
Families are fractured mostly across the capital city. Lucía lives alone with her elder sister, and family members visit when they can, with decreasing frequency. Cultural ceremonies, when they occur, are now largely outsourced to contracted priests, caterers and shamans rather than undertaken by residents.
The disintegration of this small, rural community is manifest in its appearance: increasing numbers of abandoned buildings choked with vegetation surround the square. The children’s play area contains disused swings in full sunlight, little else. Behind it, there is a 50-meter stone tower with a citrus tree growing, seemingly against the odds, at the very top.
“They tried to take [the tower] down with the rest of the hacienda to sell the stone for new buildings,” explains Lucía. “They tied wire around it and tried to pull it down with a truck, but it simply wouldn’t budge, so they just had to let it stand there. It’s a little piece of the town’s past that refuses to go away. Most everything else is long gone.”
The impact of more and more residents abandoning Nilchí for nearby Campeche city can be seen in unkempt tombs at the local cemetery.
Mostly. The truth is that the past in Nilchí is not entirely gone, although Lucía’s perception that it has disappeared is damning enough for the town and its future.
Some of what is left centers around Day of the Dead, which still holds a unique place in this town’s cultural life, primarily focused on the tradition of washing the bones of those recently departed. A visit at any time of the year, in fact, demonstrates this, with deceased ancestors on full display in the graveyard niches in the cemetery, usually made up of their bones wrapped in a sheet and placed in a wooden box.
Even this most unique of cultural traditions, however, has taken a hit in recent years with encroaching disarray as more of the dead are forgotten and tombs are unkempt.
“We don’t make the pibipollo [a centuries-old Maya dish of the Yucatán Peninsula made with chicken and homemade tortillas] ourselves anymore — somebody else usually comes in to do it,” says Lucía. “And if you want a priest to pray for your dead, you have to hire him, and then he’ll add you to the list.”
As Lucía tells of the slow strangulation of the tradition in this town, another community member wanders over from across the neglected children’s play area. She, too, has lived in Nilchí since she was born and remembers a time when Day of the Dead was an overwhelming event that each year reminded the community of the importance of its history and of where its members are all going.
She tells of the hacienda next to which she and Lucía are standing, in which she lived as a child and which year by year and piece by piece was dismantled so that the resources stored in the infrastructure could be used to tide the family over in hard times.
A small children’s playground in Nilchí has seen better days.
Pomuch, a community in the north of the state, is now internationally recognized for its bone washing tradition; people flock to the town for Day of the Dead to witness the act and to see the colorful graveyard in which the bones reside throughout the year.
Though the fears that the ancient Mayan tradition will be lost are prevalent even there, Pomuch is the preservation-of-tradition foil to Nilchí. The cemetery in which the ritual bone-cleaning takes place is large and well-maintained year-round. It attracts tourists from across the country who help fuel the local economy and perpetuate the importance of the Day of the Dead ceremonies, to the point that it increasingly exists as a kind of theme park.
By contrast, the graveyard in Nilchí is small, and no one outside the community comes to visit. They did not last year; they will not next year either. And looking around now, the feeling here is of a town at the edge of the known world — isolated, hidden in plain sight.
Before leaving the town, the graveyard draws you in one more time, as if its voices are calling to you in their loneliness. In one tomb, the bones of somebody’s beloved are simply lying on the ground surrounded by litter. The box in which they should have resided has disappeared, or maybe never existed in the first place because it cost someone too much.
Just outside the cemetery, a lone child hops onto a bench, running with a plastic bag containing a Coca-Cola bottle in one hand and a clinking pot of change in the other, the face of modernity in a disposable plastic bottle that infects the space where once stood a community.
Far from having departed, the dead and the forgotten, it seems, are walking here among us in small rural towns across the country.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Houston Astros pitcher José Urquidy. Courtesy MLB México
Houston Astros pitcher José Urquidy became the first Mexican pitcher to win two World Series Major League Baseball games on Wednesday after playing a key role in his team’s 7-2 victory over the Atlanta Braves.
The 26-year-old Mazatlán native struck out seven batters over five innings in Wednesday’s game at Minute Made Park in Houston. The series is now tied at 1-1.
Urquidy’s first World Series victory came in Game 4 of the 2019 series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals. The Nationals won that series 4-3.
“It means a lot,” Urquidy said after Wednesday’s game. “This is something that I have worked for a long time, when I was a kid, when I [played] in Mexico. I’m living the dream,” he said.
“I know there’s a lot of Mexican people … in the stands tonight … supporting me. It makes me feel even more motivated and focused knowing that I have to do a good job, and it makes me proud to represent the country that I’m from.”
The only other Mexican pitchers who have played in World Series game wins are the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela (1981), the Detroit Tigers’ Aurelio López (1984) and the Dodgers’ Víctor González and Julio Urías (2020). However, none of those pitchers has played in two World Series game victories.
A select group of just 12 Mexican-born baseball players have won a World Series title, including González and Urías last year. Urquidy, who debuted in the Major League in 2019, now has the opportunity to become the 13th.
Game 3 of the series will take place in Atlanta Friday while the seventh match, if required, is scheduled for next Wednesday.
Abigail Montes, right, faces off against Claressa Shields.
Mexican fighter Abigail Montes won a surprise victory over the United States’ Claressa Shields in a mixed martial arts (MMA) bout in Florida on Wednesday.
Montes, a 21-year-old from Guadalajara, prevailed via a split decision (29-28, 28-29, 29-28) in the Professional Fighters League showdown with Shields, a two-time Olympic winner who is widely considered the world’s greatest living female boxer.
It was just the third professional MMA fight for Montes and her first outside Mexico. She now has a 3-0 record.
It was Shields’ second professional MMA bout and her first loss. She announced her plans to transition into MMA last year and had her first fight in June.
Abby Brave, as Montes is nicknamed, was particularly dominant at the tail end of the third and final round, landing 15 unanswered blows.
“Montes went for broke in the final minute, positioning herself on top of Shields and letting her hands go,” the website Boxing Scene reported.
“I’m ecstatic to get such a big opportunity. I’m at my mental and physical peak and getting such a big fight is the perfect opportunity for me to seize,” she said.
In the Montaña region of Guerrero, 40,000 pesos (about US $2,000) is enough to buy a young bride.
An umbrella organization of children’s rights groups has condemned the federal government for downplaying the seriousness of Mexico’s child trafficking problem, which includes the sale of young girls for marriage.
The Network for Children’s Rights in Mexico (REDIM) said Tuesday that human trafficking, including the sale of girls, is a crime that the Mexican state must investigate and eradicate.
“We condemn the prevalence of this practice, which under the argument of laws and customs of indigenous communities objectifies girls and adolescents in several entities of the country, such as the Montaña area of Guerrero,” REDIM said in a statement endorsed by executive director Tania Ramírez Hernández.
REDIM rejected the federal government’s “permanent disregard” of its responsibility to guarantee Mexican children’s rights. “It’s unacceptable that the authorities, with an adult-centric vision, minimize and downplay situations as serious as the sale of girls,” it said.
REDIM charged that the government’s attitude has led to “an intentional failure of the state to deal with this terrible practice,” referring to the sale of girls, which it said precedes crimes such as sexual violence and child marriage.
It also came shortly after a case came to light in which a 15-year-old girl sold into marriage at the age of 11 was jailed for 10 days after she fled the home of her father-in-law, who allegedly attempted to rape her.
Visiting the Montaña region last Sunday, López Obrador said a media campaign had made the sale of girls for marriage or prostitution appear to be a bigger problem than it really is.
“I’m not here to look at that because it’s not the rule,” he said. “There are a lot of moral, cultural and spiritual values in the communities. It might be the exception, but it’s not the rule.”
REDIM said in its statement that child trafficking is an underreported problem but nevertheless a growing one. Statistics show that at least 1,463 minors — 1,054 girls and 409 boys – were victims of human trafficking between January 2015 and July 2021, the organization said.
REDIM also said that the number of child trafficking victims increased 45.8% to 261 in the first eight months of 2021 compared to the same period last year. Just under 70% of the victims between January and August this year were girls.
“The minimization of this problem is unacceptable” given that statistics show that 2020 and 2021 are the worst years ever for femicides, human trafficking and child pornography, REDIM said.
It also said that 6.8% of girls aged 15 to 17 and 0.6% of girls aged 12 to 14 were married or living with their partner in 2020. The figures for boys of the same age were 2% and 0.3%, respectively.
The percentages are higher in certain states, including Guerrero. Data from the National Statistics Institute shows that 11.8% of girls in Chiapas aged 15 to 17 are married, while the figures for Guerrero and Michoacán are 11.1% and 10.2%, respectively.
Migrants say a prayer together before leaving Huixtla early Wednesday morning. Ben Wein
The migrant caravan traveling north from Tapachula, Chiapas, hiked 17 kilometers to Villa Comaltitlán on Wednesday after making slow progress due to an unusually large contingent of pregnant women and children. Organizer Irineo Mújica confirmed that most caravans reach Huixtla on the first day: this time it took three days.
The convoy assembled at 5:30 a.m. Wednesday outside Huixtla’s Catholic church. Many migrants spent Monday night at a cramped sports facility, but were transferred Tuesday to the streets outside the church, where women and children were provided shelter.
Mújica prevented the caravan from leaving Huixtla until the trash on the streets was cleared. He then led a prayer, with each line called back by the crowd: “Our father, we are leaving from this town … touch the hard hearts of the politicians … don’t criminalize our liberty … a government that demands respect but imprisons you without conscience … and the women and children too, who are condemned to live in the streets, to suffer from hunger … [the government] is taking its dollars stained in blood,” he said.
The caravan approached a National Immigration Institute (INM) checkpoint some three hours later, where the migrants halted, fearing repercussions. After a short standoff, the convoy surged forward unopposed and the barrier was raised, sparking celebrations and cries of “Freedom! Freedom!”
Migrants pass through an INM checkpoint in Chiapas on Wednesday. Ben Wein
Soldiers, immigration officials and private security guards admired the spectacle of the enormous crowd, taking photos and videos on their phones as it passed the checkpoint barrier, about 10 kilometers north of Huixtla.
A private security guard named Eric who worked at the station said he was on the side of the migrants. “They should be free to transit … so that their dreams can be realized,” he said.
Numerous travelers collapsed on the highway under particularly intense heat, with temperatures above 38 C, the news agency EFE reported. There was only one Health Ministry ambulance available to serve at least 2,000 people, although organizer Luis Rey García Villagrán quoted a much higher total of 4,000 migrants, 1,250 of which were minors, he said.
The organizers instructed the convoy to pause about four kilometers from their destination, where they rested under mango groves for a few hours before arriving at Villa Comaltitlán around 5 p.m.
Here they were met with an unexpected welcome — the corpse of an unidentified man lying in the park where they set up for the night. But municipal police officers removed the body from the park, where most of the convoy stayed, while others were housed by a Catholic church after it opened its doors to women and children.
Rights organizations such as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) appear to have left the convoy; representatives from the Mexican Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and INM medics were present in Villa Comaltitlán, but not readily available on the highway. Chiapas rural health organization Mother Earth Mexico provided medical attention and water at the entrance to Villa Comaltitlán.
