Indigenous Tzotziles in Chenalhó announce their new self-defense force.
At least five new self-defense forces have sprung up in Chiapas since July 7 in areas east of Tuxtla Gutiérrez.
The most recent group announced its presence in a video uploaded to social media featuring camouflaged indigenous Tzotziles from Santa Martha Chenalhó wearing balaclavas.
The group said it formed to curb the violence over a land dispute with the nearby communty of Aldama which has run for 60 years and has left nearly 20 people dead.
Other forces are more explicitly political in their goals. A group formed in October in Altamirano aims to remove former mayor Roberto Pinto Kanter and his wife, mayor-elect Gabriela Roque Tiapcamú, from power.
In a video similar in design to the first, they stated their accusations: “… we have seen how the rich protect themselves among the rich, how politicians protect themselves among politicians, whatever political stripe they are, they want to deceive us into believing that they have changed their political stripes and are new. What never changes is their indifference towards us, the Tzetal and Tojolabal Indians,” a spokesperson said.
“Here the person that wins an election is the one with the most money,” he added.
Another group called The Machete, which announced its aims on July 7, formed in opposition to Pantelhó Mayor Raquel Trujillo, who it accuses of having links to organized crime. Another group called People of the Forest popped up on September 29 to support The Machete.
A fifth group is called the Armed Force of Simojovel. It demands that mayor-elect Humberto Martínez respect indigenous communities, and end crime and the theft of public resources.
The sparsely populated, rural state is politically fragmented and complex. Aside from self-defense forces the largely indigenous militant Zapatistas (EZLN) control substantial swaths of land, making the authority of the state’s elected politicians questionable.
The EZLN rose in opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and demanded that the autonomy of indigenous communities be recognized in the constitution.
The catrinas are preparing for the Day of the Dead in Mexico City.
Mexico City’s International Day of the Dead parade will return this year in all its splendor and color after being forced online in 2020.
The festival is one of Mexico’s most important, and is almost universally celebrated by indigenous communities. It is marked by smells of copal, an abundance of marigolds, elaborate altars and cemeteries lit up with candles. Mexico City first hosted a parade to coincide with the holiday in 2016, which was well received by the public.
The parade will start at midday on October 31 and travel 8.7 kilometers from the city’s main zócalo to Campo Marte, a military complex near the Auditorio Metro station. More than 1,000 volunteers will participate, including 150 musicians and 350 dancers and acrobats. The parade will be divided into four themes: Tenochtitlán, Mexico City today, Magic and Tradition, and Celebrating Life.
Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the parade would be dedicated to victims of the pandemic. “The city is going to celebrate its Day of the Dead festival with sanitary protections. The festivities have two characteristics: one is very sad — what we have lived through recently in our country … which is that thousands of people have died from COVID-19, so the event is dedicated to all those people … so we can pay tribute,” she said.
She explained that 98% of the city’s adult population had received at least a single dose of COVID-19 vaccine, allowing the event to resume, and that the festivities would provide an important economic boost.
Mexico City Tourism Minister Paola Félix said the participants have rehearsed in groups of no more than 40 people as a health measure. There will be sanitary checkpoints and random COVID tests for participants during the event, which attracted some 2.6 million people in 2019.
Meanwhile, the Alfeñique festival in Toluca, México state, has also been given the go-ahead. Eighty-one artisans will convene in the city center from October 15-November 2 to sell chocolate and traditional sugar skulls for Day of the Dead altars.
A Mexican team plays a team from Belize at a competition staged at Teotihuacán in 2017.
On Saturday, the first Southeast Mexican Cup of the ancient Mesoamerican game of pelota maya will take place in the Yucatán community of Umán, 18 kilometers southeast of Mérida. It is a celebration of one of the world’s oldest sports.
This tournament will host teams from Yucatán, Campeche, Chiapas and Quintana Roo. As well as being a tournament in its own right, this event will also act as a precursor to the World Cup championship on December 2–5 in Mérida, determining which players will progress to that final competition.
That December contest will see teams from Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama and the host, Mexico, compete. Three World Cups have already been held for the ancestral sport: in Chichén Itzá in 2015, in Guatemala in 2017 and in El Salvador in 2019.
Qualifying rounds for the international tournament have already been held in San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala, which saw the winning team, Ajpopab Tzutujil, earn their ticket to the final in Mexico.
Ancient Maya civilizations in countries all over what is now Latin America, and all over Mexico, played a version of this ballgame — as did the Mexica. Perhaps the best-known surviving game court is located at the Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá in Yucatán. In recent years, the game has been revived as a modern sport in Mexico and several Latin American countries.
Players in Mérida doing a demonstration of the sport for primary school students.
Pelota maya — which is just one term for the game among the different groups in different countries that play it — has become an increasingly important part of sporting culture for the indigenous people of the Mesoamerican region. Although the idea of watching a modern ballgame rarely draws to mind implications of power and politics, there are social and cultural implications inherent in the playing of many sports, none more so than the oft-forgotten Mesoamerican ballgame.
In Umán, for example, the municipal government established a free school in 2019 for Maya youth to learn the game of their culture. “We are betting on the new generations practicing this sport that our ancestors left as a legacy,” municipal official José Manuel Ruiz Garrido told the newspaper El Financiero soon after the school’s opening.
The revival of this most ancient of ballgames represents the rescuing of a silenced tradition and a link between the Maya of today and the world of the past.
This is not a game for the fainthearted. Though the losers are no longer killed as sacrifices to the gods, bruises are ubiquitous — as can only be expected after continually flinging your body onto the ground in pursuit of a three-kilogram rubber ball.
The specifics of the game as it was played in ancient Mesoamerican societies remain largely unknown, and the precise mechanics are likely to have varied across cultures and eras. The game as it is played today, therefore, is based on passed-down culture and the suppositions of researchers who have attempted to divine the rules and symbolism of the game from architectural remains.
In the modern-day version, the heavy rubber ball is pushed with the hip in an attempt to displace the other team from their court, until the ball crosses the end line. It is played by both men and women, as it would have been by the ancient Maya.
Pelota maya players in Umán, Yucatán, where the Southeast Mexican Cup will be held on Saturday.
Ultimately, though, the details of how the game is played are at best only equal to the cultural importance of the sheer fact of its revival. As a game, pelotamaya is a demonstration of dexterity, strength and strategic mastery, but more than this it is a sport that speaks to the history of an entire society.
The game was undoubtedly played for a variety of reasons and had a multitude of meanings to different Maya peoples; it is believed to have stood in for acts of warfare, to have functioned as a ritualistic religious ceremony and to simply be a good way to pass the time.
The elements of the game, too, are laden with overlapping symbolism. The game is central to the epic Popol Vuh, the Maya story of creation, in which two pairs of brothers enter the underworld and play the ballgame against the gods there.
The first pair of twins, the First Fathers, lose the game and are sacrificed. The second pair, the Hero Twins, overcome the underworld gods and outwit them at every turn. The story ends with the apotheosis of the First Fathers to the heavens, where they become the sun and the moon and bring about the beginning of the cycle of fertility and harvest that nourishes the rest of civilization.
The ballcourt thus becomes emblematic of the transition between the cycles of life and death, a liminal space between the underworld and the earth.
To this day, the motivations behind the playing of the game remain complex: it is a legacy to leave to the future, and it is an honoring of a culture that has historically been quashed by Western Christian society. During the Spanish invasion of the region, conquistadors systematically erased the game by destroying the ball courts, only some of which now remain.
Escuela enseña gratuitamente juego de pelota tradicional maya "Pok Ta Pok" en México
A school in Umán, Yucatán, offers free training in pelota maya.
In recent years, groups from across Mesoamerica have been salvaging this essential piece of Mayan society from the annals and breathing life into it once more; many hope that it will spread across the region and gain in popularity to rival sports such as soccer and baseball.
Pulling the first team sport ever played into the modern Mesoamerican consciousness, this month’s tournament, as well as the international cup in December, are an opportunity for the indigenous people of Mexico to become living witnesses to the past. Through them, it is hoped that the vein of shared sportsmanship that once ran through the Mesoamerican civilizations can be reinvigorated and given new lifeblood.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Angélica, her grandmother and her three sisters at the police facility in Guerrero where they were detained.
A 15-year-old girl sold into marriage at the age of 11 was jailed for 10 days in the Montaña region of Guerrero after she fled the home of her father-in-law, who allegedly attempted to rape her.
Angélica, who was sold for 120,000 pesos (US $5,800) in accordance with traditional customs in the municipality of Cochoapa el Grande, went to live with her in-laws after her husband emigrated to the United States in search of work.
Her father-in-law, who claimed to be the girl’s “owner” because he bought her for his son, allegedly tried to rape Angélica on four separate occasions, prompting her to flee his home late last month.
The teenager took shelter with her grandmother, according to the newspaper Reforma, but after her father-in-law demanded her arrest, community police officers from the village of Dos Ríos arrived at the house and detained her.
The authorities also arrested the girl’s grandmother because she refused to pay 210,000 pesos demanded by the father-in-law. In addition, they detained Angélica’s three little sisters — an eight-year-old and six-year-old twins.
Cochoapa, Guerrero, where young brides are sold according to traditional customs.
Angélica, her sisters and their grandmother were held for 10 days in a police lockup until they were released last weekend.
The newspaper El Universal reported that their arrest didn’t come to light until the girls’ mother reported it while receiving medical treatment last Saturday at a hospital in Ometepec, a municipality about 100 kilometers from Cochoapa el Grande.
Pregnant with triplets, Concepción Ventura got into an argument with police after arriving at the lockup with food for her four daughters. During the disagreement, one of the officers reportedly punched Ventura, causing her to have a miscarriage.
After officials with the Guerrero Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Affairs heard about the girls’ arrest, they traveled to Dos Ríos to demand their release.
The former body announced Sunday that the girls had been freed. Human rights and women’s rights organizations have denounced what happened to Angélica, her sisters, her mother and her grandmother.
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It is unclear what consequences the police will face for their actions and whether the girl’s father-in-law will face charges related to his alleged sexual assault.
“It’s an old practice that we can’t eradicate even though the law says that the practice is a crime — human trafficking, specifically,” Serafín Nava Ortiz, a local lawyer and municipal official, said in 2017.
Zulma, a Type-1 diabetic 12-year-old, received a COVID vaccine last month, but she had to obtain a court order to get it. Now all minors over 12 will be eligible.
A judge has ordered the federal government to offer COVID-19 vaccines to all youths aged 12 to 17.
Health authorities have so far only inoculated minors who obtained injunctions ordering their vaccination while the government announced last month it would offer vaccines to more than 1 million children with health conditions that make them vulnerable to serious illness.
But there are no plans to vaccinate all youths in the 12-17 age bracket.
However, a México state-based federal judge ordered health authorities to modify the national vaccination policy (PNV) to include all minors between those ages. The judge ruled that the youths must be immunized with the Pfizer vaccine, the only shot that has been approved for the inoculation of children in Mexico, and that any attempt to justify not altering the PNV on the grounds that there was a shortage of Pfizer vaccines would not be valid.
The ruling came in response to an injunction request filed by the family of a girl seeking her vaccination. The judge determined there was no impediment to an order applying to all youths because access to health care is a universal human right.
The government has until Thursday to comply with the order, which would benefit some 10 million Mexican minors.
However, the federal Health Ministry could choose to challenge the injunction, a move that would prompt a review process that could take weeks.
President López Obrador has maintained that the government won’t vaccinate minors en masse until international health authorities recommend it.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Children and adolescents tend to have milder disease compared to adults, so unless they are part of a group at higher risk of severe COVID-19, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.”
“More evidence is needed on the use of the different COVID-19 vaccines in children to be able to make general recommendations on vaccinating children against COVID-19,” WHO says on its COVID-19 vaccine advice webpage. Its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts has concluded that the Pfizer vaccine is suitable for use by minors aged 12 years and above.
“Children aged between 12 and 15 who are at high risk may be offered this vaccine alongside other priority groups for vaccination. Vaccine trials for children are ongoing, and WHO will update its recommendations when the evidence or epidemiological situation warrants a change in policy.”
Speaking in Durango last Friday, López Obrador said that a census is currently underway to identify children who qualify for vaccination due to an underlying health condition.
“And when the world’s health organizations authorize vaccination for children who don’t have any illness, we’ll vaccinate them as well,” he said, adding that the government won’t do so beforehand due to the risk of “causing harm” to minors.
The president also opined that booster shots are not needed for fully vaccinated people.
“We have to be careful because what pharmaceutical companies want … is to sell more vaccines. So they issue propaganda saying there is a need for another vaccine [dose],” López Obrador said.
Almost three-quarters of Mexican adults have received at least one dose, and the government intends to have offered a shot to everyone aged 18 and over by the end of October.
Pamela's location and forecast track as of 10 a.m. CDT. conagua
Hurricane Pamela is forecast to be near major hurricane strength before it makes landfall in Sinaloa on Wednesday morning.
A hurricane warning is in effect for Bahía Tempehuaya to Escuinapa, Sinaloa, and tropical storm warnings have been declared for Bahia Tempehuaya to Altata, Sinaloa, and Escuinapa to Cabo Corrientes, Jalisco, and the Islas Marías. In Baja California Sur, there is a tropical storm watch in effect from Los Barriles to Cabo San Lucas.
The center of the Category 1 hurricane was about 400 kilometers southwest of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and 298 kilometers south-southeast off the southern tip of Baja California at 10:00 a.m. CDT according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s latest advisory. Its maximum sustained winds were 130 kph and it was moving northwards at 20 kph.
“This general motion should continue this morning, followed by a faster northeastward motion by this afternoon or tonight … the center of Pamela will pass well south of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula through tonight, and make landfall in west-central Mexico within the hurricane warning area Wednesday morning,” the advisory said.
Winds with gusts of 80 to 100 kph and waves of three to five meters are expected off the coasts of Baja California Sur, Nayarit and Sinaloa Tuesday. Intense rainfall of 75 to 150 millimeters is predicted for Baja California Sur and Sinaloa.
Hurricane conditions are expected from Bahía Tempehuaya to Escuinapa late Tuesday or early Wednesday with tropical storm conditions arriving Tuesday evening. Tropical storm conditions could be seen in Baja California Sur Tuesday afternoon.
“Significant coastal flooding and large and destructive waves will affect areas near where the center of the hurricane makes landfall Wednesday. Sinaloa and western Durango will see about 100 to 200 mm of rainfall with isolated totals of 300 mm, which could trigger significant and life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.
Swells generated by Pamela will begin to affect portions of Baja California Sur, southwestern and west-central mainland Mexico Tuesday. They are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions, the National Hurricane Center said.
Sinaloa Governor Quirino Ordaz Coppel met with Civil Protection officials Monday to prepare for Pamela’s arrival.
The state Civil Protection chief Juan Francisco Vega Meza confirmed there were 128 temporary shelters available with capacity for up to 64,000 people.
He added that the state government requested a declaration of emergency from federal Civil Protection authorities for the municipalities of Navolato, Culiacán, Elota, Cosalá, San Ignacio, Mazatlán, Concordia, Rosario and Escuinapa.
Hundreds of LP gas distributors blocked about 20 roads in the greater Mexico City area on Monday after the federal government refused their demand for gas prices to be raised by 1 peso per kilo.
The disgruntled distributors, whose earnings have fallen since the Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) set maximum prices for LP gas just over two months ago, used their trucks to block major arteries including the Periférico ring road, the Viaducto crosstown freeway and highways that link the capital to municipalities in neighboring México state as well as Pachuca, Hidalgo.
The blockades caused traffic chaos in Mexico City, and some angry drivers hurled abuse at the protesting gaseros.
The protest came after distributors met with Energy Ministry (SENER) officials to demand that the CRE price ceiling – implemented to prevent price gouging – be raised by 1 peso per kilo. Distributors previously went on strike when the ceiling took effect in early August.
In a statement issued after the meeting, SENER said that current prices are based on international and domestic wholesale gas prices and already allow for “sufficient profit” for distributors.
Unhappy with the response, distributors said they would seek another meeting with authorities Tuesday and threatened to close gas retailers and intensify blockades if their demand for a higher price ceiling was not met.
Outside SENER’s Mexico City headquarters, where gas distributors were holding up cardboard signs with messages such as “You hug the narco and leave the gas man without anything to eat,” protesters clashed with police after the Energy Ministry made its position known.
Distributors also used their trucks to block Insurgentes Avenue, on which the SENER headquarters are located. Video footage posted to social media showed one distributor holding a hose and threatening to douse a police officer with gas. The man, who squirted gas onto the road near police, was subsequently arrested, the Mexico City government said.
Government secretary Martí Batres condemned the man’s actions, describing them as “irresponsible.” He said the Mexico City Attorney General’s Office will determine the charges the distributor will face.
Mexico’s coronavirus situation continues to improve with reported cases down 43% in the first 10 days of October compared to September, while reported COVID-19 deaths declined 24%.
The Health Ministry reported 59,012 new infections in the first 10 days of the month for a daily average of 5,901, down from 10,394 in September.
An additional 4,581 COVID-19 fatalities were registered in the same period for a daily average of 458, down from 606 in the previous month.
Mexico’s accumulated case tally stood at 3.72 million after 2,690 new cases were reported Sunday while the official death toll was 282,086. As of Sunday there were just over 40,000 estimated active cases across the country, a figure that has decreased markedly since peaking well above 100,000 in August.
Hospitalizations of COVID patients have also declined. Federal data shows that no state has an occupancy rate in general care COVID wards above 50% and just two – Baja California and Aguascalientes – have rates above 40%.
For beds with ventilators, two states – Morelos (59%) and Aguascalientes (50%) – have occupancy rates above 50% but no other state exceeds 40%.
Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said recently that more than 95% of hospitalized COVID patients are unvaccinated, a cohort that continues to shrink. The Health Ministry reported Sunday that 74% of the adult population has had at least one shot.
All told, more than 107.1 million doses have been administered since inoculation began last December. At 95%, Mexico City has the highest vaccination rate in the country followed by Querétaro (92%), Quintana Roo (88%) and Sinaloa (86%).
Ben Wein aboard the bus with migrants after his arrest in Chiapas.
I went to the south of Mexico to meet migrants and cover their struggles on their northward journeys, but I never envisioned I’d become one.
Traveling back from a town to Tapachula, Chiapas, on October 3, the minibus I was in was stopped by immigration officials at a checkpoint. I soon realized the highway was littered with such checkpoints, stationed with heavily armed soldiers.
An immigration official asked to see my passport. I didn’t have it, but offered a UK driving license. Insufficient.
I would be taken to the immigration office in Tapachula where my legal status in the country would be verified, the officials said.
Before long, myself and a Honduran migrant, Marlon, were loaded onto a bus with about 30 Haitian migrants. We arrived at the “21st Century” migrant detention center nervous and confused. What happened next offered no remedy.
Belts off, shoelaces off, was the order. That was the moment it dawned on me where I really was. Amid a heavy police presence our phones and money were confiscated.
We were led into a section full of what can only be described as inmates and told to pick up a mattress and find some space on the floor. A heavy metal door with a small barred window was locked behind us. Federal police officers guarded the door in case anyone thought of escaping.
Tensions were high: this wasn’t the kind of place where you wanted to be a newbie.
It had a strong smell of male sweat due to the presence of about 130 men who had bigger problems than personal hygiene. I was never told the maximum capacity of the hall, despite asking repeatedly, but would guess about 40.
There was barely space to move; the hallway was flooded with mattresses and defeated expressions. Our section of “21st Century” offered a mess hall, which we were told might be the best place to find a spot on the floor; showers; two televisions blasting out Mexican programming; non-flush toilets short of doors, and an exercise yard with a concrete football pitch and a police watchtower.
No food was available that night. I spoke with Marlon and two migrants from El Salvador before finding a safe looking space in the corner, and attempting sleep.
Migrants inside the Tapachula detention center. ben wein
I woke to discover the exercise yard and wandered out to see something unexpected. An Indian boy, legs crossed, hands clasped, praying to the Hindu god Shiva. He was one of five Indians inside who had traveled to South America and trekked across the Darien Gap, an inhospitable and dangerous area where Colombia’s border meets Central America.
Some Venezuelan and Colombian inmates had crossed it too. Other African detainees from Ghana, Burkino Faso and Senegal also knew the Darien Gap first hand. Many of that African contingent could be seen engaged in Islamic prayer throughout the course of the day.
However, those nationalities were in a minority. A large proportion of the migrants were from Haiti, many of whom only spoke French Creole. A handful spoke Spanish, having lived in Chile, and some others spoke Portuguese due to their years in Brazil.
Central Americans were the other major population, from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua. A smattering of Cubans and a lone Peruvian completed the list.
Wherever they were from, when I explained my story and my nationality I was met with a mixture of bemusement and hilarity from police included, who found the situation hugely amusing. Sympathy was understandably in short supply, my case seemed resolvable. Some others had been inside for more than three months.
At one point I battled my way to make a phone call and rang the owner of my hotel in Tapachula to plead that she deliver my passport to the detention center. I presumed once I could present my passport entry stamp and immigration form I would be released. That turned out to be false.
My documents, I was told, would have to be verified in a laboratory in Mexico City. It was now apparently a question of proving my innocence rather than my guilt, contrary to basic legal principles. However, there was actually no legal complaint against me. Like the other immigrants I was in a legal black hole. We hadn’t been arrested. In fact, according to immigration officials and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, we had been “rescued.” In reality, we had been taken hostage.
The destination for everyone inside, except for myself, was the United States. Many were applying for refugee status in Mexico through the refugee agency Comar as a means to that end. They were detained, wrongly they believed, even after making their application. Others were released and ordered to leave the country by the nearest border within 20 days.
It turned out, however, that the American Dream was a hard one to extinguish, and almost all of the migrants, whatever their legal situation, were determined to make it to the U.S.A.
Rumours abounded that the U.S. government was paying Mexico per head for every would-be migrant it detained. I wondered if that price were per migrant, or per migrant per night, and if we were being kept in for long spells as a money-making exercise.
Sleep was scarce and nutrition was poor. Amid poor hygiene and the sheer quantity of people inside, diseases were spreading. More people were coughing each day. Immigration officials denied that the COVID-19 pandemic could breach the walls of the detention center: “There is no COVID,” one official told me.
I would repeatedly beat on the metal door demanding immigration officials attend to the section, provoking the police on the other side, while being wary not to push them too far. My assumption was that immigration officials were legally bound to be in attendance 24 hours a day, but we once went for 20 hours without as much as a visit.
The writer’s passport was in his hotel room in Tapachula.
The days passed waiting for meal times, feeling enraged and hearing tales of migration. That said, there was fun to be had too. The boisterousness of 130 guys who had lost all respect for authority made for some pleasing Tom and Jerry style runarounds.
What might surprise people is how little violence there was at “21st Century,” odd scuffles aside. Although there were certainly violent criminals among us — some admitted as much — no one wanted to land themselves in hot water. The police remained calm as a generality, and ignored provocations. The immigration officials were masters of disinterest. It was negligence more than anything, astounding in its plenty, that put inmates at risk.
Eventually, at about 11:00 p.m. on October 7, my name was read from a list. By that time I’d got to know almost everyone inside, and had become well liked. I felt sad to leave behind those in more desperate situations than mine.
What I didn’t know is that someone had been fighting for my freedom from outside. By her own intuition she had managed to get in touch with the head of immigration in Chiapas, which seems to have prompted my release.
I waved and shouted “good luck” to the inmates who were lying down for another night on the floor.
As I was led out of the facility and tasted fresh air, for the first time in my life I knew the value of freedom. I celebrated it with a whisky in the first bar I found.
Investment in music education and other cultural activities for children can help bring peace to Guerrero, according to the founder of a cultural center in the state’s notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region.
Josafat Nava, a theater director and founder of the El Tecolote cultural center in Arcelia, told the newspaper Reforma he intends to lobby incoming governor Evelyn Salgado to build 25 new community centers across the state where children can learn to play an instrument, participate in theater workshops and attend art and dance classes.
“I’m sure that if the government of Guerrero invests in cultural matters, we will have a pacified state,” he said.
Nava said politicians in the southern state, including governors and mayors, have failed to adequately invest in cultural activities for children and for that reason orchestras such as that formed at his cultural center don’t exist elsewhere.
El Tecolote boasts an orchestra made up of 45 children who play traditional music with a range of instruments, including violin, double bass and guitar.
“… A child with a violin is a sicario [cartel hitman] disarmed,” Nava said, suggesting that an interest in music can lead young people away from crime.
He said he founded El Tecolote on his teacher’s salary in 1994 because he believed that music is a vaccine against violence.
Children from Arcelia and other nearby municipalities attend the cultural center and are not charged a single peso to participate in cultural activities, Nava said.
Some attendees have gone on to study art, music and dance at renowned colleges, including four who won scholarships to study in Barcelona, he said.
