Mexico and Colombia’s commonalities include both blessings and curses

By

-

September 17, 2021

Simon Bolívar established ties between Colombia and Mexico that are still strong today.

A disclaimer: as I write these lines, I know not where I am heading nor how it will end.

There are no other two Latin American countries as alike or as endeared to each other as Colombia and Mexico. We were even neighbors exactly 200 years ago.

In 1821, 11 years after we began fighting for our independence from Spain — Colombia on July 20, 1810, and Mexico on September 16 of the same year — we shared a border that today is the boundary between Costa Rica and Panama. This was when México, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica were part of the (short-lived) First Mexican Empire that had Mexico City as its capital and when Colombia, Panamá, Venezuela and Ecuador comprised the (ephemeral) Great Colombia, for which the capital was Bogota.

There are probably no other two nations as blessed by nature and as cursed for their proclivity for living on the edge: Colombia, the one with a War of the Thousand Days and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude; and Mexico, the one with the Mexican Revolution and Octavio Paz’s The Labyrinth of Solitude.

Both countries are privileged by their geographies, natural resources, histories, cultures and public-spirited peoples yet beleaguered by poverty, violence, corruption, drug trafficking and political demagoguery.

One of Mexico's curses is criminal violence. — One of Mexico’s curses is criminal violence.

Blessed are we both by our two coastlines — the Pacific and the Atlantic — and their marine natural resources, as well as the rainforests of the great Lacandon Maya jungle in Chiapas, and Colombia’s part of the vast Amazon rainforest and the indigenous peoples that live there.

Blessed are both countries by the mighty Amazon and Caquetá rivers in Colombia and the Usumacinta and Grijalva rivers in Mexico. Mexico has part of the Mesoamerican Reef, the world’s second largest barrier coral reef, and Colombia is home to 60% of Earth’s stunning páramos — those neotropical high-altitude ecosystems that extend between the upper tree line and the perennial snow border (3,200 to 5,000 meters above sea level), which creates a sky island archipelago.

Blessed are we both for having 1.7% of the planet’s total area, where together we are home to 20% of Earth’s biodiversity. Colombia has the highest number of species of birds, orchids and colorful butterflies on the planet, and it is second in diversity of amphibians and vascular plants.

Mexico has the highest number of pine species and is second in diversity of reptiles, third in mammals and fifth in amphibians.

Volcanoes, dead and alive, also bless us: Pico de Orizaba, Popocatépetl, Iztaccíhuatl, Nevado de Toluca and Malinche (“the one with the blue slopes” in Nahuatl) and Nevado del Ruíz, Nevado de Tolima, Nevado de Huila, Galeras and Puracé (“the mountain of fire” in Quechua).

We are also blessed with ancient indigenous cultures — Aztec, Maya and Olmec, and Muisca, Tairona, and Inca. Mexico is the world’s fifth most linguistically diverse country (it has 364 living languages), and 7.4 million Mexicans speak an indigenous language while

The Mesoamerican Reef is one of Mexico’s natural treasures.

Colombia has 65 living languages and 1.4 million Colombians speak an indigenous language.

Mexico is the country with the most Spanish-speaking people, while Colombia is second. Spain is third.

In 1821, Colombia was the first country to recognize Mexico’s independence. In fact, the first congratulatory message Mexico got as a free nation was from Simón Bolivar, el Libertador himself, on behalf of the Gran Colombia. The two countries established diplomatic relations on October 3, 1823, with the signing of the Treaty of Friendship.

That same year, Colombia and Mexico together laid out the basis for the Hispanic American asylum doctrine in a treaty of nonextradition for political crimes created in order to protect the heroes who had launched independence movements in the region.

Since Spain didn’t recognize the independence of any of its colonies or former colonies in the Americas, in 1823, Colombia fostered an alliance with Mexico against Spain’s aggressions with a flotilla of cannon-carrying ships to harass Spanish maritime trade in the Caribbean.

They also incited Cuba’s quest for independence — as documented in Germán de la Reza’s 2015 essay published in the journal Secuencia, “The Attempt to Integrate Santo Domingo into Gran Colombia (1821–1822).”

In 2016, former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and Mexico’s president Peña Nieto pledged to work together to fight cartels and drug trafficking between their two nations.

Those bonds between Colombians and Mexicans are even stronger today: Mexico is the third-highest source of visitors to Colombia, and Colombia is Mexico’s second-highest source of tourists. Colombians are the most numerous Latin Americans to study in Mexican universities.

Colombia is Mexico’s second most important Latin American commercial partner, and Mexico is Colombia’s third most important import partner, and sixth in terms of direct foreign investment. Mexico is the second largest Latin American economy and Colombia is fourth.

So if those are our blessings, what are our curses?

Some people say that Colombians and Mexicans are innately violent and corrupt, respectively. Nonsense.

However, it’s true that Colombia’s fratricidal wars between conservatives and liberals during 1946–1958 left 300,000 dead and 2 million displaced — at the time, nearly a fifth of the country’s population. From 1812 to 1902, Colombia faced thousands of deaths and the havoc caused by nine civil wars.

And since the 1960s, the armed conflict between the government and the left-wing guerrillas, the right-wing paramilitaries and the drug cartels and other organized crime has killed more than 220,000 Colombians. Millions of families were devastated.

Demonstrators in Bogotá, Colombia, outside the residence of President Iván Duque in May, protesting forced disappearances of citizens.

In Mexico, it has been estimated that 1 million people died between 1910 and 1920 in the wars of the Mexican Revolution. It was the continent’s deadliest civil war and the world’s ninth deadliest.

More recently (2006–2021), Mexico’s war against drug cartels and organized crime has resulted in the death of more than 372,000 Mexicans, leaving hundreds of thousands of orphans and widows.

And let us not forget that both Colombia and Mexico are globally among the countries where the most environmental defenders have been killed.

According to the United Nations, Colombia is currently the country with the most internally displaced citizens due to war, violence, and persecution: 8.3 million people (10% of the world’s total), including millions of children, have been forced to abandon their homes, leaving everything behind, resulting in even more displaced people than in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, Yemen or Afghanistan.

Paradoxically, Colombia also ranks second on the planet in accepting refugees (it is home to 7% of the world’s total, including 1.7 million Venezuelans). And in August of this year, Colombia and Mexico were the first Latin American nations to offer asylum to refugees from Afghanistan.

As of December 2020, Mexico had 357,000 internally displaced people, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council. Regrettably, our current policy on refugees is contradictory, to say the least.

As recently as July 2021, Mexico’s government marked Simon Bolívar’s birthday.

On the one hand, Mexico was the first Latin American country to take refugees from Afghanistan (some 500 so far), but on the other hand, we seem to be turning our homeland into a despicable wall to stop refugees who are desperately fleeing hunger, crime and the impacts of climate change in Central America and the Caribbean.

Finally, two of the worst and most deeply rooted curses in Mexico and Colombia are their inequality and corruption. According to the United Nations Development Programme, between 2000 and 2019, Latin America was the second most inequitable region, only after Sub-Saharan Africa. And both Mexico and Colombia are among the countries with the most income concentration among the fewest people.

Mexico is Latin America’s second most inequitable country and Colombia is its sixth. Ten percent of Mexico’s population holds 59% of the national income, while 1% of Mexican citizens hold 29% of the nation’s income. And Transparency International, a global coalition working in over 100 countries to end corruption, has reported that Mexico is 124th and Colombia 92nd on their list of corrupt countries among 180 analyzed (the higher the position, the higher the corruption index).

As I admitted at the beginning of this essay, I don’t know how to close these thoughts.

That is why, with humbleness, I would only share the words that my Colombian and Mexican compatriot Gabriel García Márquez said in Mexico City on October 22, 1982, after receiving the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico’s highest distinction to a foreigner:

“It is not, then, my second homeland, but another one, different than was given to me without conditions and without contesting the love and fidelity I profess for my own homeland, and the nostalgia with which she demands both from me without truce … My sons have grown here; I have written my books here; I have planted my trees here. … Thank you for these open doors. May they never be closed, please, not under any circumstances.”

Omar Vidal, a scientist, was a university professor in Mexico, is a former senior officer at the UN Environment Program and is the former director-general of the World Wildlife Fund-Mexico.

Mexican bats, up close and personal: what’s not to love?

By

John Pint

-

September 17, 2021

0

long nosed bat — Not only essential pollinators and pest control agents, bats are pretty cute when not just recently assaulted by a terrifying nature photographer with a net. Merlin Tuttle

There are over 1,400 species of bats in the world but only 350 kinds of dogs. You are probably acquainted with quite a few of the dogs, but how many species of bats have you seen?

If you are like most people, you have probably never had a good, close, eyeball-to-eyeball look at even one bat in your entire life. Neither did I until I took up cave exploring as a hobby and then suddenly found myself thrown into the world of bats.

One of the first things I learned was that bats often turn off their famous echolocation systems when they’re hanging around a cave that they consider home … much the same as we might walk to our bathroom in the middle of the night without bothering to turn on a light.

How would you feel if you bumped straight into a large body while walking — all in the dark — toward your bathroom door?

Well, that’s what happens when a bat discovers a caver inside its home. After a few collisions, I learned that you have to let the bats know that there’s an intruder in the house … Yes, perhaps by singing a little song while squatting at the entrance to a bat passage until the inhabitants have had a chance to notice your presence.

Mother-and-child-Epomophorus-gambianus — Mother and child: young bats, like young humans, sometimes con Mom into taking care of them long after it’s necessary. Merlin Tuttle

Most people only see bats from a distance, as fleeting shapes, silhouetted against a night sky, but as a caver, I got a glimpse of them as social beings.

In La Cueva del Chapuzón, the closest big cave to Guadalajara, we crawled along a long narrow passage that ended at a high point near the ceiling of a big room. By chance, there was a long narrow fissure in the roof of the room, through which a few rays of sunlight happened to be falling upon a bunch of bats hanging from the ceiling only two meters from the spot where we were observing them.

This meant that we could see them right in front of us without using our lights, and for over an hour, we sat there on our little balcony, our feet dangling inside the room, totally entertained as we watched the antics of those bats.

They were grouped into clusters: family units? circles of friends? bat chats? I don’t know, but If you think bats spend all day sleeping upside down, you are wrong. These little creatures were full of energy and very busy doing whatever they were doing … and then we spotted Lonesome George.

George the bat would move from group to group, obviously trying to participate in the action. With great difficulty, he would push himself into one wiggling and jiggling mass of bodies, disappear for a minute and then suddenly pop back out.

“They don’t like him,” we whispered; but George, undaunted, would simply move to the next cluster of bodies and push his way right in, only a minute later to be ejected like a cassette tape (remember those?). George, however, was in no way inclined to give up, and we were all soon rooting for him as he approached yet another social unit.

Richard Morecroft with his bat Archie — Richard Morecroft, a trustee of the World Wide Fund for Nature, worked with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in production of *Raising Archie*, his story of raising an orphaned baby bat.

Years later, thanks to a gizmo that lowers bat frequencies to human audio levels, we discovered that all this frantic activity is accompanied by the bat equivalent of raucous chatting, laughing, complaining and frequent shouting to someone all the way at the other end of the room. Caves are thought of as quiet places, but if there are bats in it, it is about as quiet as a fiesta celebrating Mexican Independencia.

So we began to suspect that bats were far more interesting creatures than we had ever imagined, and this was confirmed when we came upon Archie.

Archie was a baby flying fox whose mother had been electrocuted on power lines in Australia. When her body was removed from the wire, it was discovered that she still had a baby clinging to her — and it was alive, cold and thirsty.

Archie was given food, kept warm and soon handed over to a volunteer foster parent: Richard Morecroft, a TV newscaster who tells the story of what happened after that in his book Raising Archie, published in 1991 by Simon & Schuster.

Morecroft’s story is funny and heartwarming. He describes feeding and washing his little flying fox, as well as changing its diaper, taking it to the post office to be weighed and, three months later, teaching it to fly.

Because the baby bat required constant care at the beginning, Morecroft had to take it to the studio where he worked. There, wrapped in a handkerchief — a substitute for its mother’s wings — it would occasionally wiggle under his shirt as he read the news every evening.

Thanks to the author’s media connections, the book has 54 delightful photographs, and it’s difficult to believe any human could page through it without falling in love with this little creature with big, beautiful eyes.

The photos of Archie contrast dramatically with the pictures of bats that used to appear in textbooks and encyclopedias before 1982. Typically a researcher would catch a bat in a net, disentangle it and hold it by its outstretched wings as a colleague snapped a photo of the utterly terrified struggling creature who showed its teeth to what it could only presume were predators about to devour it.

But then in 1982, Merlin Tuttle, the much-beloved face of the Milwaukee Public Museum, left his comfortable position and moved to Austin, Texas, to found Bat Conservation International.

Tuttle knew all too well that bats were considered all over the world as terrifying shadows in the dark: rabid rats with wings. He also knew that they were really peaceful creatures as smart and loving as dogs and that neither the planet nor the human race could possibly get along without them.

Realizing that what bats most needed was a public relations agent, Tuttle set out to help them change their image. Besides writing numerous articles for National Geographic, Tuttle devoted endless hours to photographing bats as they normally look while going about their business of pollinating plants, controlling insects and dispersing seeds.

He accomplished this by taking the bat out of the net, calming it down, finger-feeding it and then training it to cooperate with him inside a large studio that he would set up in the jungle, on a mountaintop or inside a hotel room.

La Cueva del Chapuzón cave in Jalisco — A crawlway in La Cueva del Chapuzón (Cold Dunk Cave) near Guadalajara leads to “balcony seats” for observing bats.

Since bats are so clever, it might take only a day or two before they would, for example, fly on cue to the upper tip of a cactus (lopped off and stuck on a pole) to pollinate its recently opened flower.

To get a picture of just one bat doing its thing, a picture worthy of Nat Geo, Tuttle would take as many as 10,000 photos. This, of course, was in the days before digital photography, when photographers might spend hours deep inside a cave with no idea if even one of their pictures might be a winner.

In his book The Secret Lives of Bats, Merlin Tuttle describes his modus operandi:

“The next evening, my assistants set nets at a fruiting fig tree in the Kakamega Forest [in Kenya] and caught three Wahlberg’s epauletted fruit bats,” he writes. “These readily accepted food from my hand. Night after night, I virtually lived with my bats until I could call any one of them to my hand, pick them up, carry them around, even wipe a dirty face with a tissue.

“As with all bats, each had its own personality and intelligence, and some would permit liberties not accepted by others. Knowing their individual personalities was essential.”

The short shrift that bats usually receive was frequently on my mind as a cave explorer because it didn’t take me long to discover that in many parts of rural Mexico there is a “war against bats” taking place, which I hope to describe in a future article.

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for 31 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.

Who says bats are ugly? This epauletted bat is a seed disperser and lives in trees. Merlin Tuttle

Richard Morecroft feeding his bat Archie — Morecroft prepares to feed his baby bat, which is wrapped in a handkerchief to provide a sense of security. When not feeding, Archie was content to suck on a pacifier.

Documentary tells the story of the indigenous uprising in Cherán, Michoacán

By

MND Staff

-

September 17, 2021

0

In a still from the documentary, a member of the community's voluntary security force stands guard.

A documentary about an indigenous uprising against organized crime in Michoacán and the subsequent establishment of a self-governing community premiered online on Thursday.

Cherán: The Burning Hope tells the story of Cherán, a Purépecha town 110 kilometers west of Morelia.

Fed up with the presence of drug traffickers and illegal loggers, residents banded together to oust the criminals in 2011, even using bonfires to prevent loggers from entering the community.

They later established their own security force to supersede the municipal police, whose members were in cahoots with the criminals, and dislodged the municipal government, replacing it with a community council.

Produced by Doha Debates, an organization affiliated with the non-profit Qatar Foundation, and directed by Elpida Nikou and Rodrigo Hernández, the 13-minute film tells the story of Cherán from the perspective of its residents.

Cherán: The Burning Hope | Doha Debates

Watch this video on YouTube

Much of it is narrated by Yunuen Torres Asencio, an activist and owner of Radio Fogata, which has recorded oral histories of Cherán’s tumultuous past.

[wpgmza id=”347″]

“Before 2011, as young people we felt our liberties were being taken away,” she says at the start of the film.

“We couldn’t move around freely and were surrounded by fear. [Organized crime] was like a well-planned monster that, every day, was taking more of our territory in Michoacán.”

But in the 10 years since organized crime groups were expelled and Cherán became autonomous, peace and security have improved and the community has built a sustainable economy that includes a sawmill, a construction materials company and a garden, all of which are managed by the community, as well as Latin America’s largest rainwater collection system.

“Autonomy is the decision to govern ourselves. That is what gives us hope,” Torres says.

The documentary features spectacular aerial footage of Cherán and surrounding areas shot by drone operator Miguel Tovar and provides a fascinating insight into the struggles and successes of a small town in Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violent states.

Mexico News Daily

Buying an iPhone 13 represents 49 days of work for Mexican professional

By

MND Staff

-

September 17, 2021

0

The iPhone 13 Pro costs 25,999 pesos (US $1,300) in Mexico.

An average Mexican professional has to work almost 50 days to afford the latest edition of Apple’s iPhone, an analysis by an international e-commerce platform found.

Picodi looked at iPhone 13 Pro (128GB) prices and average wages in numerous countries to develop its iPhone Index 2021, which determines how many days people need to work to buy Apple’s flagship product.

It found that an average Mexican has to work 49.3 days to afford the new phone, which costs 25,999 pesos (US $1,300) in Mexico.

The index used Mexican government data that shows that professionals earn 12,298 pesos (US $615) per month on average.

Millions of Mexicans earn significantly less than that amount, putting a new iPhone well out of reach.

Mexico ranked 5th to last in Picodi's 2021 iPhone Index. — Mexico ranked fifth to last in Picodi’s 2021 iPhone Index. Picodi

The index assumes that all of a worker’s earnings are put toward purchasing the cell phone.

The period for Mexico is 5.1 days less than it cost Mexicans to buy an iPhone 12 Pro in 2020, according to Picodi’s previous index.

Workers in just four countries included in the 2021 index – Turkey, Philippines, Brazil and India – have to work for a longer period to afford an iPhone 13.

Swiss workers have to work just 4.4 days to buy it, a shorter period than that needed by workers in all of the other 46 countries included in the index.

Ranking second is the United States, where workers can buy the phone after just 5.9 days of labor, followed by Australia (6.4 days), Luxembourg (6.4 days) and Denmark (6.9 days).

With reports from El Economista

Thousands of migrants, most from Haiti, converge on Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila

By

MND Staff

-

September 17, 2021

0

Migrants make their way across the Rio Grande near Ciudad Acuña.

There are more than 10,000 migrants in a makeshift camp beneath a bridge that connects Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, to Del Rio, Texas, the mayor of the latter city said Thursday.

Bruno Lozano said 10,503 migrants were camping under the Del Rio International Bridge on the U.S. side early Thursday evening, an increase of more than 2,300 compared to Thursday morning. The size of the camp, whose conditions have been described as squalid, has grown rapidly in recent days: migrant numbers were in the hundreds, rather than the thousands, earlier in the week.

Most of the migrants are Haitians, who have arrived in Mexico in large numbers this year, but Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans are also among the occupants.

They crossed into the United States to seek asylum but face lengthy waits for their claims to be processed, and could be returned to Mexico in the interim, although they will likely be transferred to U.S. migrant facilities first.

About 20 migrants told the news agency Reuters that there has been scant food and water in the camp, where daytime temperatures are currently hovering around 40 C and there is little shade. Reuters said it witnessed hundreds of migrants wading across the ankle-deep Rio Grande to re-enter Mexico to purchase essentials they aren’t receiving on the United States side of the border.

Ernesto, a 31-year-old Haitian, said he and his three-year-old daughter hadn’t received any meals in the camp since arriving there on Monday morning. He made his fourth trip back to Mexico on Thursday to buy food and water but told Reuters that his money is now running out.

The Haitian said immigration agents have generally not bothered him during his shopping trips to Mexico, a stark contrast to the heavy-handed tactics they have recently used to detain migrants in the south of the country.

Other migrants showed Reuters numbered tickets they received from the United States Border Patrol (USBP) after crossing Mexico’s northern border. Several said they had been told by other migrants that they could be stuck at the camp for up to five days.

Jeff Jeune, a 27-year-old Haitian reselling bottles of water to make a bit of money, said he and his young family had been sleeping on the ground and were exhausted and hungry. He said he was worried his children could fall ill in the camp.

“My 10-year-old asks: ‘When are we leaving?’ He’s always asking that,” he said.

The Border Patrol said in a statement that it was deploying more personnel to Del Rio to facilitate “a safe, humane and orderly process” for migrants, who have swarmed to the Mexico-United States border since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January.

Thousands of migrants, many from Haiti, seek shelter beneath a bridge near Ciudad Acuña. — Thousands of migrants, many of them from Haiti, have camped under the Del Rio International Bridge.

It also said that migrants have been given drinking water and towels and that portable toilets were available.

“To prevent injuries from heat-related illness, the shaded area underneath Del Rio International Bridge is serving as a temporary staging site while migrants wait to be taken into USBP custody,” it added.

Some residents of Del Rio, located in a county won by former U.S. president Donald Trump at last year’s election, said the federal government appeared to have abandoned its border security obligations.

“Are they doing anything to stop them coming?” one woman asked Reuters while looking down at the camp from the bridge.

The answer to that question in Mexico is yes, as the National Guard and immigration agents has detained hundreds of migrants traveling in at least four caravans that left Tapachula, Chiapas, in late August and early September.

Some have been sent back to Guatemala, yet more than 2,000 kilometers to the north, migrants are still streaming into Ciudad Acuña.

El Siglo de Torreón reported that hundreds of migrants, some with babies and/or small children, are arriving in buses on a daily basis. Almost immediately after arriving in the northern border city, they cross the Rio Grande to seek asylum in the United States, the newspaper said.

Some migrants told Reuters they chose to cross into the U.S. from Ciudad Acuña because the river is shallow and there is less cartel activity than some other border areas. Mexican officials and migrants believe that more asylum seekers will make their way to the U.S. via the border city in the coming days.

There are also large migrant camps in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, and Tijuana, Baja California, that U.S. authorities have urged Mexico to clear.

During the Trump and Biden administrations, migrants who have reached the United States have routinely been expelled to Mexico under a health order put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. But a U.S. district judge ruled Thursday that the order is unlawful because expelling asylum seekers denies them “the opportunity to seek humanitarian benefits” they are entitled to under immigration law.

Handed down by Judge Emmet Sullivan, the ruling takes effect in 14 days. However, it applies only to families and not single adults, who represent a sizable portion of migrants recently detained by the USBP.

With reports from El Siglo de Torréon and Reuters

Time names revenge porn campaigner one of 100 most influential people

By

Rose Egelhoff

-

September 17, 2021

0

Activist Olimpia Coral Melo Cruz has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2021, thanks to her work to outlaw revenge porn in Mexico.

When the Puebla native was 18, her then-boyfriend filmed her having sex — without her consent, content that he later distributed on the web. As the video spread through social media in her community, Melo tried to commit suicide three times, but eventually found solace in the words of her mother.

“We all have sex. Your cousin, your sister, me. The difference is that they see you do it. That doesn’t make you a bad person or a delinquent. You just enjoyed your sexual life like any other person. Shame is when you have robbed or killed someone,” Melo’s mother told her.

Melo eventually decided to report what happened to the authorities, but her attempts only drew derision from an official who said that she since she was not drugged or raped, there was no crime. That was when she realized that things needed to change. She began compiling testimony from other victims of revenge porn and founded the National Front for Sorority to prevent abuse and support victims.

Her activism led to the approval of “Olimpia’s Law,” which prohibits the distribution of sexual content without the consent of those involved. The federal law, which was passed in April, punishes revenge porn distributors with up to six years in prison.

“I hope that she inspires people around the world to not only take up this cause but also speak up for themselves,” activist Amanda Nguyen wrote in Melo’s Time profile. “It can be difficult to be a survivor, speaking up about something so personal, but Melo Cruz’s impact will not only be meaningful right now, it will be remembered in history — and history is on her side.”

Others named to the Time list this year were the formerly royal couple Prince Harry and Meghan, actor Kate Winslet, gymnast Simone Biles, U.S. President Joe Biden and musician Bad Bunny.

With reports from Proceso and Time

9 civilians dead after confrontation in Coahuila

By

Rose Egelhoff

-

September 17, 2021

0

Scene of Thursday's attack against police.

A confrontation between a group of armed civilians and security forces in Coahuila left nine civilians dead on Thursday afternoon.

State police were patrolling the Anáhuac-Colombia highway in Hidalgo, a municipality located on the border with Texas, when they were attacked. The aggressors fled but the security forces followed and with the support of additional agents and the army, the attackers were located.

According to a state press release, when the security forces caught up with the armed civilians, the group once again attacked in a confrontation that left nine of the latter dead. Several others managed to flee.

Security forces took possession of two of the aggressors’ vehicles, including one with improvised vehicle armor known as a monstruo or narco tank. They also seized 10 weapons, including a Barrett .50 caliber semi-automatic sniper rifle.

The incident occurred in the same area where state police prevented 30 trucks carrying gunmen from entering Coahuila on August 25. After exchanging fire, the trucks fled back toward Nuevo León. Three officers were injured in the conflict.

With reports from Milenio and Proceso

In online talk, historians to look at the conquest from a Mexica perspective

By

Michelle Aguilar

-

September 17, 2021

0

Historian Camilla Townsend, whose book Fifth Sun examines accounts of the conquest written by the Mexica, appears with history writer Gerard Helferich in a talk hosted by the San Miguel Literary Sala.

The San Miguel Literary Sala continues its monthly online offerings in September with workshops and an online discussion on September 19 featuring two historians who have written extensively about Mexican and Latin American history.

Camilla Townsend, a history professor at Rutgers University and the author of the 2019 award-winning book Fifth Sun, a new look at the history of the Spanish conquest of Mexico based on long-ignored indigenous accounts written at the time, will appear in a live streamed talk entitled “A New History of the Aztecs” with nonfiction history writer Gerard Helferich, author of Humboldt’s Cosmos: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey That Changed the Way We See the World and Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya.

Townsend won the McGill University Cundill History Prize for Fifth Sun in 2020. She is also the author of Malintzin’s Choices: An Indian Woman in the Conquest of Mexico.

The authors’ discussion on the conquest, part of the Literary Sala’s Distinguished Speakers Series, can be seen live via videoconferencing software on September 19 from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. CDT. Viewers will have an opportunity to ask questions of the speakers afterward. Tickets must be purchased in advance.

The Literary Sala will also be hosting four online workshops for writers this month. All the classes are live and interactive for participants via videoconferencing software.

Author Terry Persun will lead the online workshop “Breaking the Rules of Fiction” on September 20 and 22 for the San Miguel Literary Sala.

Listings below are all given in Central Daylight Time:

September 20 and 22, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. — Dinty W. Moore: “Memoir in Small Doses: The Brilliance of Writing Briefly.” The author and essayist will teach participants about flash prose and how writing in 1,000-word chunks teaches the “cooking” skills for a longer book-length banquet. With in-class writing prompts and reviews of brilliant examples of flash prose, you will learn how to focus and complete your larger project. Moore’s nonfiction books include Between Panic and Desire and To Hell With It.
September 20 and 22, 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. — Terry Persun: “Breaking the Rules of Fiction.” Persun will show workshop participants how to be storytelling rebels, breaking the standard writing edicts while still writing stories with memorable characters, conflicts and settings. Persun’s long list of fiction in several genres includes Backyard Aliens and The NSA Files.
September 21 and 23, 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. — Michael Bazzett: “Tell Me a Story: Evoking Narrative in Poetry & Vignette.” Bazett will help you explore how story is evoked in modes other than a straight narrative. Students will participate in playful exercises and explore how honoring the narrative impulse creates leaner, more engaging writing. Bazzett’s poems have appeared in Ploughshares and The American Poetry Review.
September 21 and 23, 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. — Joe Gillard: “What’s Your Author Brand?” In this introductory how-to class, learn what an author brand is, how it’s used in the industry and why authors need a brand or to further develop the one they have, whether they’re a poet, a memoirist, a science writer or a romance novelist. Gillard has experience in digital marketing, social media, public relations and reputation management.

For more information and to buy tickets for these events, contact the San Miguel Literary Sala via its website.

Flooding overwhelms Oaxaca communities, leaving knee-deep water in streets and homes

By

MND Staff

-

September 17, 2021

0

Residents of San Dionisio del Mar relieve flooding by opening a channel between a lagoon and the ocean.

Heavy rain in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca caused flooding in several communities this week.

One of the worst affected areas is San Mateo del Mar, a small municipality on a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and Laguna Superior.

Neighborhoods near the lagoon, such as Santa Cruz, Barrio Nuevo and San Pablo, have suffered the worst flooding, a local fisherman told the newspaper Reforma.

Residents of San Mateo, located 30 kilometers south of Salina Cruz, say they have received no assistance or aid from authorities despite their homes and the streets of the town being inundated with water for days.

They issued an appeal for help to federal and state authorities accompanied by photographs of the situation they face, Reforma reported.

The fisherman, who asked not to be identified, said there was knee-deep water in the streets and people’s homes. Residents are concerned that the flooding will cause fresh water to be contaminated with sewage, he said.

“It’s certain that the little fresh water [we have] in wells for consumption is beginning to be contaminated,” he said, adding that approximately 18,000 residents depend on the water sources.

The fisherman asserted that the Oaxaca government has only dispatched aid to Santa María del Mar, a neighboring municipality. He also said that people with infected feet due to their submersion in water for days cannot access adequate medical treatment.

“… The clinic doesn’t have supplies, health personnel aren’t there 24 hours, the doctors come and go,” he said.

San Mateo Mayor Bernadino Ponce hasn’t been seen in the flood-affected areas, the fisherman added.

“We’re demanding that resources or benefits directly reach the community authorities … not that pseudo politician. We’re asking the navy, the army and Civil Protection authorities to help families,” he said.

Communities in another municipality on the banks of Laguna Superior have also endured flooding. In the absence of government support, residents of San Dionisio del Mar, including members of several fishing cooperatives, banded together to alleviate flooding in communities such as Pueblo Viejo and Huamúchil.

Assisted by about 15 Zapotec residents of the nearby municipality of Juchitán – where flooding has also occurred – the indigenous Ikoots people of San Dionisio used shovels and picks to dig a channel between the overflowing Laguna Superior and the Pacific Ocean to give the excess water a route to flow out to sea.

That work should have should have been completed by state authorities with heavy machinery, the newspaper El Universal reported, but they didn’t show up to do it despite being urged to do so since Sunday.

The residents finished the work at about 4:00 p.m. Wednesday and subsequently placed a Mexican flag in the sand next to the trench in recognition of the 211th anniversary of the start of the War of Independence against the Spanish and the cooperation of the Ikoots people for the common good.

With reports from Reforma and El Universal

COVID roundup: 93% of Mexico City adults have had at least one shot

By

MND Staff

-

September 16, 2021

0

A 14-year-old girl is vaccinated in Nuevo León after obtaining an injunction.

Nineteen of Mexico’s 32 states have first-dose COVID-19 vaccination rates above 70%, the Health Ministry reported Wednesday.

Mexico City, the country’s coronavirus epicenter since the beginning of the pandemic, has the highest coverage among the eligible population with 93% of adults having had at least one shot.

Querétaro ranks second with 92% followed by Quintana Roo (86%) and Yucatán and Sinaloa (both 85%).

Five other states have rates of 80% or higher. They are Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, San Luis Potosí, Baja California and Tamaulipas.

Nine other states have rates above 70%: Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Durango, Nuevo León, Sonora, Hidalgo, Colima, Coahuila and Nayarit.

The national vaccination rate is 69% with 61.4 million adults having received at least one shot. If Mexico’s population of children is taken into consideration, the country’s vaccination rate falls to just below 50%.

Minors haven’t been vaccinated in Mexico with the exception of a small number of adolescents who have obtained injunctions ordering they be given the shot. However, the number may rise.

An opposition politician in Nuevo León said Wednesday that injunctions for vaccination have been registered on behalf of 1,800 youths in Nuevo León.

Meanwhile, the Health Ministry reported 7,040 new cases on Thursday, lifting Mexico’s accumulated tally to just under 3.55 million. The official COVID-19 death toll rose by 433 to 270,436, a figure that the government has acknowledged is a significant undercount.

There are just under 80,000 estimated active cases across Mexico, a significant decline compared to the peak of the delta variant-driven third wave last month. Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Tuesday that the pandemic is now on the wane in all 32 states.

Mexico News Daily