Mexico’s War of Independence 101: a quick overview for newbie expats

September 11, 2021

Mexicans celebrate the Cry of Dolores in Puebla.

So Mexican Independence Day is coming up, and if you’re not Mexican you probably wonder: why do the festivities start the night before?

Well, Mexicans’ love of partying may be part of the reason but not the main one. It has to do with how independence from Spain was achieved.

Mexico’s struggle came at a time when much of the New World was itching to throw off European rule and Spain was weak because of Napoleonic invasion and internal instability. The War of Independence wasn’t one campaign led by the same set of actors from beginning to end. It was a series of insurrections for over a decade in danger of collapsing on more than one occasion.

The first of these insurrections was led by Miguel Hidalgo, the name most strongly associated with the Independence story. He has a street named after him in the center of just about every town or city.

Hidalgo is considered to be the father of his country, but he was also a “father” in the sense that he was a priest — and despite this, because he sired five children that he acknowledged. (¡Viva México!) It is because of him that Independence Day celebrations begin late on September 15 even though the official holiday is the 16th.

Miguel Hidalgo portrait from Museum of Independence — Portrait of Miguel Hidalgo that hangs in the Independence Museum in Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato.

At 11 p.m. on September 15, 1810, Hidalgo climbed the bell tower of the church in Dolores (now Dolores Hidalgo), Guanajuato, to call the parishioners and exhort them to overthrow the colonial government. He had been planning a rebellion with others in Querétaro, but the plot had been discovered, so his choices were to start immediately or get arrested.

Little did he know how quickly the small crowd that night would swell as it marched toward Mexico City.

With mayhem along the way, the mob/army made its way to the outskirts of the Valley of México. There they defeated the royal army at Monte de las Cruces, but in a decision that still causes debate, Hidalgo decided not to descend into the capital but rather retreat to Guadalajara.

Eventually, this decision cost Hidalgo his head, literally, as it was hung from the Alhondiga building in Guanajuato after his execution in Durango.

Hidalgo’s insurgency lasted less than 10 months, but it is the best remembered. After his death, the fighting waned in central Mexico but resurfaced elsewhere, especially in Morelos, Guerrero and Oaxaca. Several important leaders emerged, including Mariano Matamoros, Vicente Guerrero, Guadalupe Victoria and Ignacio López Rayón.

The movement, however, coalesced around José María Morelos. His importance is such that he appears alongside Miguel Hidalgo on the new 200-peso bill. He understood military tactics better than Hidalgo and brought guerilla strategies into the struggle.

AMLO reenacts the Grito de Dolores in National Palace — President López Obrador reenacts the Grito de Dolores at the center balcony of the National Palace in Mexico City. Leaders at all three levels of government do this ritual.

Morelos and the other rebels mentioned above also had political skills. They formulated documents called “plans” to articulate their goals and rationales. This concept would be central in the chaotic century that followed Mexico’s separation from Spain.

I should mention that many current history books list Morelos as a mestizo — someone whose ancestry was a mix of Spanish and indigenous. However, at the time of his birth, he was classified as “Spanish” (likely criollo, i.e., a child who had been born in the New World whose parents had been born in Spain), even though he did have some indigenous ancestors on one side of his family.

This may reflect the attitudes of both time periods since he was a descendant of the conquistador Hernán Cortés, but today’s politics favor historical figures of indigenous or mixed heritage in a number of ways.

Morelos’s primacy lasted from 1811 to 1815. His success in the south of the country forced the Spanish viceroy to reorganize his army. But Morelos was captured, interrogated, tried and executed by firing squad. With his death, the insurgents abandoned any form of conventional warfare.

The next major phase came under the leadership of Vicente Guerrero, a mestizo with African heritage. With the death of Morelos, the viceroy thought the rebellion was all but over and even offered amnesty to insurgents. Many accepted, only to take up arms again when the opportunity arose.

This phase of the war, from 1816 to 1820, was a kind of stalemate between insurgents and royal forces. Insurgents attacked roads and convoys but launched few major attacks.

Agustín de Iturbide entering Mexico City in 1821. His name is relatively unknown although he was Mexico’s first head of state.

But Spain itself was embroiled in internal struggles after Napoleon was ousted in 1813. Support for royal troops in Mexico was lacking. A number of royal officers, Agustin de Iturbide among them, saw the writing on the wall, especially when a December 1820 offensive failed to decisively destroy the insurgents.

However, the insurgents were not in a great position either. Despite the fact that mestizo rebels had done most of the heavy lifting for a decade, it seemed rather likely that the criollo class would take over an independent Mexico (and indeed, that is what happened). Guerrero decided that his best bet was to join forces with Agustín de Iturbide’s faction and force the viceroy to accept an independent Mexico.

This viceroy, Juan O’Donojú, was indeed the last to rule New Spain in the king’s name. He signed the Treaty of Córdoba acknowledging Mexico’s independence on September 27, 1821, 11 years after Hidalgo rang the church bell in Guanajuato.

Spain did not immediately recognize this treaty, and it would take several more years before Mexican troops would expel the last of the Spanish army from the port of Veracruz, the same place where Cortés had invaded Mexico 300 years before.

Mexico’s Independence Day begins the night before with a reenactment of Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores). This reenactment is done at exactly 11 p.m., one of the few things that must be done on time here. When I attended my first Grito reenactment at Mexico City’s zócalo in 2005, President Fox arrived late, and the crowd responded by calling him an obscene term.

Everywhere across the country, after the leader of the country and those of the states and municipalities repeat Hidalgo’s words (more or less) and ring the bell, fireworks — and, yes, lots of drinking — commence until the early morning hours.

Grito de Independencia 209 Aniversario. Presidente AMLO

Watch this video on YouTube

Leigh Thelmadatter arrived in Mexico 18 years ago and fell in love with the land and the culture in particular its handcrafts and art. She is the author of Mexican Cartonería: Paper, Paste and Fiesta (Schiffer 2019). Her culture column appears regularly on Mexico News Daily.

Is inclusive language here to stay? Either way, a little respect never hurts

Sarah DeVries

September 11, 2021

Replacing the gendered "o" or "a" in Spanish words with an "e" is one proposed (and often mocked) way of making language more inclusive.

Last week, as soon as I saw it, I clicked on Peter Davies’ piece on the use of inclusive language in Mexico. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for years now but haven’t dared.

It’s highly emotional for some, and when high emotional loads are in the mix on any subject, no amount of nuance and thoughtfulness, especially from someone like me who is trying to understand and be sympathetic but mostly doesn’t have a clue, is generally appreciated.

But now that the box has been opened, I’d like to weigh in, since language and its relationship to culture are both of deep importance and of interest to me. And since the bulk of my income these days actually comes from translating, it’s not simply an issue of armchair philosophy; it has real implications for my work.

As anyone who speaks even rudimentary Spanish knows, the plural of articles (those words like el/la, un/una, etc.), as well as those of nouns and adjectives default to the masculine when you are talking about a group with both genders. So, for example, the most likely translation for los niños ruidosos is “the loud children,” a group that probably includes both boys and girls.

However, it could also refer to loud boys and not include girls at all. But, it definitely could not mean “the loud girls” — at least not exclusively. Even if there were a group of nine girls and one boy, in Spanish, the male gender is still the default when you pluralize.

I was in college and very new to the Spanish language when then-president Vicente Fox began referring to children as niños y niñas rather than simply niños. While some linguistic purists thought it was a ridiculous gesture, I appreciated it. It did make me feel that girls were being as specifically included and given as much importance as boys, rather than simply assumed to have been (perhaps) mixed in with them.

Making decisions about how to talk about human beings is fairly straightforward: do you want to make sure everyone knows they’re being included or don’t you? Niños y niñas, señores y señoras, and even los y las maestros — these pairings have become commonplace and widely accepted.

But for some people, this seems to be their limit: I’ve seen and heard plenty of people get very worked up about the “ridiculousness” of specifically including women instead of simply letting the masculine plurals do the work for them — rather than letting women be (like Schrödinger’s cat) simply assumed to either be or not be present.

Notably, I’ve never seen or heard a woman get upset about being specifically included.

So most people say niños y niñas nowadays. Great! But there will be no resting on our laurels. Language is a living organism that changes with us, and more change is always upon us.

I’m thinking specifically of ways to recognize and respect linguistically people who consider themselves to be nonbinary, neither male nor female. Because while it’s something I don’t feel I understand at all, I’d still recommend, just as a human, always erring on the side of assuming people aren’t joking or being overly dramatic when they say something about their identity is deeply important to them.

Yet, it is a concept that has made me feel pretty old. When did this come about, and how did I not notice? In western culture, it feels brand new, though it’s not new among humankind: in the Zapotec cultures in Oaxaca, the muxe occupy a sort of third gender space, and there are numerous other examples throughout the Americas of indigenous cultures that made room for gender expression beyond the male/female dichotomy.

And I’m not that old. But when I was studying gender and sexuality from a sociological perspective in college 20 years ago, the term “nonbinary” in reference to people who wished to neither designate themselves as female nor male did not exist. I knew straight people, gay people, transexual people and people who liked to dress up as someone of the opposite sex occasionally. While they may not have preferred the pronoun that matched their biological gender, it wasn’t until much later that I came upon anyone who wished to be referred to as neither he nor she.

Thus, the gender-neutral pronouns “they/them” in English: it’s been a bit tricky to learn and remember, but if someone has explicitly expressed their desire to be referred to as such, I do my best.

I haven’t the faintest idea of what it might feel like to identify as neither male nor female, nor how it might feel to perceive that a person is misgendering me (or would it simply be “gendering” in the case of a nonbinary person?) by insisting on referring to me as one or the other. But since it’s something capable of upsetting people very much, I want to do my best to make sure others feel seen and respected.

All things considered, a slight change in pronoun is a pretty simple way to do that.

And while it can be confusing (“Wait, you have more than one person staying with you?” a friend asked me last summer when I referred to my nonbinary houseguest as “them”), the fact that in English, gender only exists in our pronouns (and that there are easy fixes for nouns — “policeman” can become “police officer,” for example) makes the changes required relatively easy to make.

But in Spanish, gender is all over the place, so the task of working gender neutrality into baked-in gendered language is a bit stickier. Writing “@” or “x” is simple enough to do, but how are we to pronounce it?

Using “e” (as in, “les amigues”) has been suggested and used by some but currently seems to provoke ridicule and eye rolls from most people — or in the case of second-language speakers like me, assumptions about my lack of knowledge about the Spanish language.

Will it eventually become the norm? Time will tell.

I feel for the student who sobbed “¡Soy tu compañere!” at her university classmate (read Peter’s article above for more details) and found herself having gone viral, not least of all because this is a country in which jokes are made of literally everything. He (or she? No, “the person”) who gets upset, loses.

But the reaction of this student also makes it clear that it’s an incredibly painful issue for them, which I think is something that should make anyone who cares about being respectful sit up and pay attention.

I appreciate being specifically included, and I bet everyone else would appreciate that too. Language matters, and whether these new linguistic suggestions take off or fall flat, it would behoove us to remember that being named is a big part of what makes us human.

Sarah DeVries is a writer and translator based in Xalapa, Veracruz. She can be reached through her website, sdevrieswritingandtranslating.com and her Patreon page.

The specter of high inflation returns to haunt Latin America

Michael Stott

September 11, 2021

fruits and vegetables — Citibank expects inflation of 6.1% in Mexico this year.

While policymakers at the U.S. Federal Reserve conduct a drawn-out discussion over the pros and cons of starting to withdraw their multitrillion dollar pandemic stimulus, south of the border the debate is already over.

Inflation is back with a vengeance and Latin American central banks are raising rates, some aggressively.

Leading the pack is Brazil, where the newly independent central bank is struggling to prevent inflation from hitting double digits. “Brazil really had a very big inflation shock,” central bank Governor Roberto Campos Neto admitted on September 1. Days later figures were published showing annual headline inflation at a five-year high of 9.7% in August.

Brazil has already raised its reference interest rate four times since March to 5.25% and investors expect another increase of at least 1 percentage point this month, with more to follow.

Inflation causes particular alarm in Latin America because of the region’s long history of price instability, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. Newly empowered central banks brought prices under control in most of the major economies over the past two decades but the region has never completely exorcised its inflationary demons.

Venezuela had the world’s worst inflation of 5,500% in 2020 and prices in Argentina are rising more than 50% a year as the central bank prints money merrily to fund a deficit — another bad old Latin American habit.

In Mexico, core prices rose last month at their highest rate since 1999 and Citibank expects inflation for 2021 of 6.1%. Although the central bank never cut rates as aggressively during the pandemic as its peers, it has tightened policy twice this year and Citi expects two more rises before the year end, taking the policy rate to 5%.

The same story is repeated along the Andes. Annual inflation in Chile hit 4.8% in August, almost double February’s level. The central bank published a hawkish inflation report, signaling further tightening after doubling rates last month. In neighbouring Peru, inflation reached 4.95% in August and the central bank has started tightening while in Colombia prices rose 4.4% a year in August.

“The picture is getting uglier by the day with the inflationary pressures rapidly disseminating, , said Alberto Ramos, head of Latin America economics at Goldman Sachs. “It will likely take a significant amount of policy tightening to put the inflation genie back in the lamp.”

Latin America was hit harder by the combined health and economic impact of coronavirus than any other region. Rapidly rising interest rates now threaten to choke off a recovery which was already losing steam as government stimulus programs wound down and prices for commodity exports levelled off. JPMorgan expects that growth of 6.4% in the region this year will slow to just 2.4% next year.

“Central banks in the region don’t have a choice,” said Ernesto Revilla, head of Latin America economics at Citibank. “They have to tighten monetary policy despite a weak economy because they can’t allow inflation expectations to drift off. It’s the curse of emerging market central banks.”

Latin American policymakers are casting envious glances at the U.S., where the Fed has so far been able to continue its multi-trillion-dollar economic stimulus despite inflation hitting a 13-year high in July.

“The Fed can keep saying that inflation is transitory and there is no need to overreact,” said Claudio Irigoyen, head of Latin America economics at Bank of America. “Eventually it will pay a price but the reality is that the world pays in dollars … Latin American central banks don’t have the luxury of saying ‘this is a temporary change in inflation.’”

The rising threat of inflation comes ahead of an election cycle that will see new presidents elected in Chile, Colombia and Brazil over the next 13 months, while Peru and Ecuador chose new leaders earlier this year. Voters are venting their anger over pandemic missteps on incumbents and favouring radical outsiders, a dynamic which bodes ill for central banks.

The Bank of México’s rate rises have already triggered a political row with populist President López Obrador. “Although the Bank of México should be paying attention to inflation and growth … for a long time they have only been concerned with inflation,” he said at his morning news conference last month.

Irigoyen said he saw “a decent chance” of more radicalization in the upcoming election. “This will create a lot of pressure on currencies and a demand for high spending, which will put pressure on central banks,” he added. “In the U.S. there are more and more people claiming that the Fed should accommodate fiscal deficits. People in Latin America will say ‘if they can do it, why can’t we?’”

Statues, high water and unfirm ground: the week at AMLO’s press conferences

MND Staff

September 11, 2021

Tuesday's mañanera brings out a full house of cabinet ministers.

President López Obrador had spent the weekend checking up on his flagship project, the Maya Train. The 1,525-kilometer railway is set to traverse the Yucatán Peninsula, an economically deprived region historically.

The massive infrastructural project could change the face of the southeast of the country, connecting far-flung ruins, indigenous towns and tourist hotspots. AMLO has said trains will be running before he leaves office in 2024.

On Monday, the man from Tabasco was back at the morning news conferences bright and early as ever.

Monday

It was a morbid start to Monday. A journalist asked AMLO how he would like to be remembered alongside the great presidents now lying in the political cemetery of history. The leader from Tepetitán said that wasn’t for him to answer: “I can’t talk about that, history will tell. I want to finish well, to continue serving the people of Mexico and when time goes by the people will judge us,” he said.

Ideological battles came to the fore later in the conference. Right wing Spanish politicians had been in town the previous week, and AMLO pointed to other foreign agents —in the time of Mussolini — who had brought propaganda to Mexico to smear the name of communism. “Mexicans, this is made in Italy, if we do not destroy communism, it will destroy our family, our moral ideas, our civilization, our longings for freedom, our homeland,” read one poster.

But the president made clear that the c-word wasn’t a term he’d shy away from. “What is communism? If to be a humanist is to be a communist, let them put me on the list,” he said.

Tuesday

“It’s raining a lot; yesterday we had floods in many states in the country,” opened the president. In better news, COVID point man Hugo López-Gatell confirmed a fourth week of reduction in cases and two thirds of adults vaccinated with a first shot. However, on the education front it was a mixed bag. Education Minister Delfina Gómez Álvarez skimmed through some unflattering figures: only just over 50% of students had returned to classes.

Another presidential raffle was set for September 15, the day of the El Grito independence celebration. AMLO brought on lottery official David Roberto Jacinto Rodríguez to detail the 22 prizes on offer, which include former narco properties and a box at the Azteca stadium.

Foreign Affairs Minister Marcelo Ebrard stepped up. He was off to the United States on Thursday, and expressed the urgency of a solution to the migrant crisis. Seven hundred and fifty migrants, many of them minors, had been rescued by authorities in three recent events, he said.

Defense Minister Sandoval reports on construction at Mexico City's new airport. — Defense Minister Sandoval reports on construction at Mexico City’s new airport.

Later in the conference, the president demonstrated his dexterity. A journalist posed the topic of the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, which threatened the legal autonomy of Sinaloa and Coahuila. AMLO, the journalist said, had previously taken a pro life stance.

“These are very controversial, contentious issues and we do not want to encourage any confrontation … if it is already in the Supreme Court, then let it be resolved there … I’m not taking sides,” the president declared.

Wednesday

Tula was at the top of the agenda. The president extended his condolences to the 16 patients killed in a Hidalgo hospital after the building flooded, and then addressed the big movements the previous evening: a powerful earthquake had hit Acapulco, Guerrero, and shaken Mexico City hard.

Ana Elizabeth García Vilchis lined up the fake news. The Christopher Columbus statue — removed from its plinth on Reforma Avenue in October — had not been destroyed; hospitals had indeed received cash prizes from the last presidential raffle; hospital ventilators were all fully functional.

AMLO revived Columbus, and celebrated his fall: Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum “has made the decision to put a sculpture of an indigenous woman on Reforma Avenue [in place of Columbus.] It seems very good … I celebrate it because it is a recognition of the deep cultural greatness Mexico, of pre-Hispanic Mexico,” he said, and added that Mexico’s heritage goes deeper than recent European developments: “In Teotihuacán there’s a huge pyramid … from the year A.D. 600, we’re talking about 900 years before the Spaniards arrived …”

Later in the conference, AMLO found himself in a mischievous mood. Visits from right-wing Spanish politicians were no problem, he said, and managed to mispronounce the name of their political party: “So, welcome to those from Fox — Vox.” The cynical observer might see a feigned reference to a former right-wing president of Mexico.

Thursday

The now defunct disaster relief fund Fonden was a “bag of money” for corrupt officials, AMLO said. Chiefs of Civil Protection, the Well Being Ministty, the navy, the defense ministry and transportation all took to the podium to detail how natural disasters were now being better tackled, including support for 35,000 people in Tula, Hidalgo.

Migration arrived at the conference: another 648 migrants had been rescued in Nuevo León to add to the 750 announced by Marcelo Ebrard on Tuesday.

“That’s what’s being discussed today in Washington. The United States has to take the decision to help poor countries, the Central American countries, and attend the causes of the migration phenomenon,” AMLO said. “Now it’s a new era … there hadn’t been any attention to the population which has to emigrate. There hadn’t been anything in years … it’s all coercive,” he added.

What of police abuse against migrants, posed a journalist. “We don’t have information about that,” AMLO replied.

Education Minister Gómez reported that schools are only at half capacity.

The cause of the Tula hospital disaster was revealed. Dams had overflowed causing the roads to turn to rivers and the hospital could not be contacted, said Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez.

A Spanish journalist returned to the conference. In his last appearance, he had said that apologies for historic wrongs were inappropriate, and that Mexico should be appreciative of what the European conquerors had brought. Now, polarization was on the menu. Words like fifí, to refer to wealthy snobs, and chairo, to describe idealistic young protesters, were having a negative impact, he said.

“Brotherhood,” the president replied, reigns in Mexico.

Friday

The Felipe Ángeles Airport, being built to serve Mexico City, was first on the Friday menu. The president had been irked by an article in the newspaper El Universal which claimed construction workers were being poorly treated. Engineers and the military top brass spoke to give their enthusiastic support to the project, which is more than two thirds complete.

Back to statues. A plinth stood empty at the President’s Causeway, located at Los Pinos, the official presidential residence where AMLO had chosen not to live. Would his effigy take its rightful place there after his term?

“I don’t want my name to be used to name any street, I don’t want statues, I don’t want my name to be used to name a school, a hospital. Absolutely nothing,” the president insisted.

On Thursday’s economic talks in Washington, one journalist reported U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris said there will be investment in Central America. The president called for a Panamerican future: “The union of our America or North America, Central America, South America, all of America, we have to unite,” he said.

A busy weekend was ahead for AMLO with travel to Sonora, Sinaloa, and Nayarit.

Mexico News Daily

Just peachy! End-of-summer harvest means easy, delicious desserts

Janet Blaser

September 11, 2021

peaches — With peach season at its height in Mexico, now's the perfect time to whip up an easy fruit-filled dessert!

Yesterday I breezed into the grocery store intent on getting in and out quickly. I only needed a few things to try a recipe for what I thought was going to be this week’s column.

I headed for the produce section just to see what was available (you know how that is, right?) and suddenly my olfactory sensors registered something very, very wonderful. Something that shouldn’t have been there, that never is. The deliciously sweet aroma took me back to summer in New York and Pennsylvania, California and Oregon, when stone fruits fill farmers’ markets and grocery stores, and one somehow grows tired of eating them.

I let my nose lead me to the left, and there they were: peaches. Piles of them. An employee was dumping boxes and boxes of the fuzzy round fruits unceremoniously onto a display table. The smell was mouthwatering.

I asked where they were from, and he pointed out the two varieties, a more yellow, smoother and bigger peach from Chihuahua and a classic fuzzy, reddish-orange peach from California.

I was skeptical, remembering the countless times I’d fallen prey to the sweet smell of plums, peaches or nectarines in Mexico and finding them mealy, dry and flavorless. Dare I risk it once again?

Peach galette — A galette makes the perfect showcase for in-season peaches!

I did. And boy, am I glad!

Late August and early September are the height of peach season in Northern Mexico and California, which produces the most peaches of any American state. (Yes, more than Georgia!) Here in Mazatlán, the Mexican peaches were from Sonora, but they’re grown in Chihuahua, Zacatecas, Puebla and Veracruz too.

I’d actually wondered why peaches were included in the traditional chiles en nogada recipes, not realizing that the harvest came in at the end of summer. If you’re living in Mexico, now is the time to look for and buy them! Wanting the peaches of my past, I bought the California ones.

Native to China, peaches are in the rose family — hence the strong, sweet aroma. Cherries, apricots, plums and almonds, too, are all in the genus Prunus. Nectarines are actually fuzz-less, smooth-skinned peaches but are marketed separately as a completely different fruit. Peaches came to Mexico with the Spaniards, who brought pits and planted them.

After two days of ripening on the counter, my peaches were slightly soft to the touch and made my kitchen smell like summer memories. They were sweet and juicy, tender and delicious, and I went back to buy more. Yes, I’m grateful to have a year-round abundance of mangos, coconuts, papayas and pineapple in my Mexican life — but there’s just something really wonderful about a perfectly delicious peach.

Usually, I include an assortment of recipes for both sweet and savory dishes. This time, I want to encourage and enable you to enjoy these delicious fruits as the desserts they deserve to be.

Peach Galette

Don’t be intimidated — galette is just a fancy name for a free-form pie. Use the same method with other fruits, like apples, berries or mangos. For step-by-step photos of the process, go here.

Pie dough for 1-crust pie
4 large ripe peaches
¼ cup tapioca or corn starch
½ cup sugar
Pinch kosher salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 Tbsp. heavy cream or milk
⅛ tsp. salt

Roll dough into a 14-inch round. Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheet, cover with plastic and refrigerate to chill dough, at least 2 hours or up to 24.

Wash peaches. (No need to peel). Cut into ½-inch slices. (Thicker slices cook slower without turning mushy.) In a medium bowl, measure out 3 cups of fruit. (Don’t use more.) Sprinkle starch over peaches; toss until well combined.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position. Arrange peaches in a ring in the center of chilled dough, tiling slices like dominoes and leaving about a 2-inch border of dough all around. Sprinkle sugar on top of peaches; finish with a pinch of salt.

peach galette dough — With a single ready-made pie crust, this is a snap to whip up.

With a sharp knife, cut a series of slits into the border of dough, each slit running from fruit to edge of the dough, spacing them about 5 inches apart.

Fold each segment of dough over peaches, tugging gently so the edge of each segment tightly overlaps the one that came before. Alternately, fold border of dough up over peaches, crimping like a big pie, leaving the fruit exposed in the center.

Whisk egg, egg yolk, cream or milk and salt in a small bowl. Brush over dough in a thin, even layer (including under each flap) to give crust a golden sheen and help bind pieces together.

Bake until pie is juicy, golden brown around the edges and bubbling in the center, 25–35 minutes.

Let cool 5 minutes, then slice into wedges and serve warm, garnished with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Peach Upside-Down Cake

¼ pound unsalted butter, softened, plus more for greasing the pan
3 large, ripe peaches
1¼ cups sugar
1 cup flour
¾ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
3 eggs

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease a 9-inch cake pan. Line bottom of pan with parchment paper and butter that too. Pit peaches; cut into slices ½-inch thick. Arrange slices in a pattern on the bottom of the pan.

Combine ½ cup of sugar with ¼ cup of water in a saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until mixture turns amber, 10–12 minutes.

Remove from heat immediately and pour evenly over the peaches.

In a medium bowl, sift flour, baking powder and nutmeg. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat together butter and remaining ¾ cup sugar. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in flour mixture. Spread batter evenly over the peaches and caramel.

peach upside down cake — This decadent upside-down cake uses fresh peaches and just six other basic ingredients.

Bake 30–35 minutes, until top is golden brown and cake is set. Remove from oven. Run a knife around the sides, then place a platter or plate on top and invert the cake onto the platter. Serve warm or cooled to room temperature.

Janet Blaser is the author of the best-selling book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, featured on CNBC and MarketWatch. She has lived in Mexico since 2006. You can find her on Instagram at @thejanetblaser.

COVID roundup: accumulated case numbers approaching 3.5 million

MND Staff

September 10, 2021

kids-vaccinated — These eight youths were the first to be vaccinated — by court order — in Nuevo León.

Mexico’s known tally of coronavirus cases approached 3.5 million on Friday with 14,233 new cases reported, while the official COVID-19 death toll rose by 699 to 266,849.

The accumulated tally now stands at just over 3.49 million, the 15th highest total in the world.

Mexico’s death toll, which like the case tally is considered a significant undercount, is the fourth highest in the world after those of the United States, Brazil and India.

On a per capita basis, Mexico has the 19th highest COVID death rate with 208 fatalities per 100,000 people, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

There are currently 100,643 estimated active cases in Mexico, a 1% increase compared to Thursday.

Tabasco continues to lead the country for active cases with more than 250 per 100,000 people, while Colima ranks second with exactly 250.

With more than 18,000 active cases, Mexico City easily has the largest current outbreak in the country but ranks third on a per capita basis with about 200 infections per 100,000 people.

In other COVID-19 news:

• Two hundred and fifty-nine days, or about 8 1/2 months, after the first shot was given on December 24, the total number of vaccine doses administered in Mexico passed 90 million on Thursday.

More than 90.3 million jabs have now been administered, according to the most recent Health Ministry data, after 865,661 shots were given Thursday.

More than 37.5 million Mexican adults are fully vaccinated while another 22.4 million have had their first dose of a two-shot vaccine.

Coronavirus cases and deaths in Mexico as reported by day. milenio

• There are 3,159 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in the metropolitan area of Mexico City, city official Eduardo Clark said Friday. The figure is 645, or 17%, lower than a week ago.

Mexico City will remain medium risk yellow on the federal stoplight map next week. Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the return to in-person classes in the capital and the further reopening of the economy hasn’t caused an increase in new cases.

She also said the government is in talks with the organizers of the Corona Capital music festival and Formula 1 Grand Prix with a view to those events going ahead with spectators. Both are scheduled to take place later this year.

• At the municipal level, the Mexico City borough of Álvaro Obregón had the highest number of active cases in the country as of Thursday with 3,486. Iztapalapa, another Mexico City borough, ranked second with 3,140 followed by Centro (Villahermosa), Tabasco, with 3,107; Gustavo A. Madero, Mexico City, 1,897; and Puebla city, 1,765.

Ranking sixth to 10th with more than 1,200 active cases each were Mérida, Yucatán; Tlalpan, Mexico City; Querétaro city; Monterrey, Nuevo León; and Guadalajara, Jalisco.

• More than 700 people who work in the lower house of federal Congress have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic and 39 have died. The newspaper El Universal reported that 115 deputies and 594 employees had been infected up until August 31.

The official COVID-19 death toll for the Chamber of Deputies is 39, a figure that includes four deputies who succumbed to the disease.

The “Chamber clusters” have occurred despite the investment of millions of pesos on initiatives designed to mitigate the spread of the virus in Mexico’s halls of power.

• Eight children were vaccinated in Nuevo León on Thursday after their parents obtained injunctions that ordered they be given shots. The jabs were given in San Nicolás de los Garza, a municipality in the metropolitan area of Monterrey.

State Health Minister Manuel de la O Cazavos said that all children aged over 12 who have obtained court orders will be vaccinated whether they suffer from an underlying health condition or not.

• At least seven people were injured on Friday when three buses that were part of a convoy taking Nuevo León residents to be vaccinated in the United States were involved in an accident on the Monterrey-Nuevo Laredo highway. Three people were reportedly taken to hospital.

Intended for the employees of manufacturing businesses that export products to the U.S., the cross-border vaccination initiative, which began last month, is the brainchild of Nuevo León governor-elect Samuel García.

With reports from El Universal, El Economista, Milenio, Aristegui Noticias and La Jornada

México state landslide buries at least 3 homes; 4 people are missing

Tony Richards

September 10, 2021

Slide damage in Tlalnepantla Friday afternoon.

Four people are missing after a landslide buried three homes on a hillside Tlalnepantla, México state, Friday afternoon.

Enormous rocks and earth became dislodged from the Cerro de Chiquihuite, probably a result of recent heavy rainfall, some officials said.

Heavy equipment and trucks were on the scene shortly after to remove debris and assist emergency personnel in the search for survivors.

Three days ago, at least one resident of the area noticed six waterfalls had formed on the hill during heavy rains. And hours later, there was a 7.1-magnitude earthquake.

The Cerro de Chiquihuite (Chiquihuite Hill) is located on the boundary of Tlalnepantla and the Mexico City borough of Gustavo A. Madero.

A huge boulder blocks a road in Tlalnepantla.

With reports from Excélsior and Milenio

There were fewer international tourists in July but they spent more

MND Staff

September 10, 2021

International tourist numbers were below pre-pandemic levels in July but foreign visitors’ combined expenditure was above 2019 levels, official data shows.

Just over 3.38 million international visitors came to Mexico in July, according to the national statistics agency Inegi, a 19% decline compared to the 4.16 million foreign tourists in the same month of 2019.

But with a total outlay of US $2.12 billion, their combined spending was 6.5% higher than July 2019, when international tourists spent $1.99 billion.

Inegi said that tourists who arrived by air in July spent an average of $1,150 each while in the country, an increase of 15% compared to 2019.

Compared to July 2020 – when international travel remained deeply depressed by the coronavirus pandemic – international tourist numbers were up 143% in the seventh month of this year. Combined expenditure in July 2021 was up a whopping 389%.

Counting international tourists and international excursionists (cross border daytrippers and cruise ship passengers), a total of 5.33 million foreign visitors came to Mexico in July, a 35% decline compared to the same month in 2019 but an 87% increase compared to a year earlier.

Foreign visitors’ total spending in July this year was $2.22 billion, a 2.3% increase compared to 2019 and a 350% surge over the seventh month of last year. International excursionists spent a combined $107.2 million, or just 5% of the total.

Mexico News Daily

As marijuana market disappears, crime groups turn to alcohol, logging, extortion

Luis Chaparro

September 10, 2021

Marijuana 'barely profitable,' says cartel operative.

Mexico remains the main international provider of marijuana for the United States, but this has greatly diminished since 2013, forcing certain criminal groups to adapt and look for other funds.

As more U.S. states move towards legalization, “Mexican marijuana has largely been supplanted by domestic-produced marijuana,” according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) 2020 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The report shows marijuana seizures along the southwest U.S.-Mexico border declined by more than 81% between 2013 and 2020, suggesting Mexican crime groups have significantly scaled down their marijuana trafficking operations.

A high-ranking Sinaloa Cartel operative in Sonora state told InSight Crime that the marijuana business is “barely profitable now.”

“I only traffic marijuana to pay some of my people in the organization. I’m paying them with kilograms [of marijuana] that they manage to smuggle and get paid for, but it’s really coming to a point where it’s no longer a viable business,” he said.

The border state of Chihuahua is Mexico’s second-largest marijuana producer behind Sinaloa, accounting for 20% of production nationwide, according to a 2016 report by a Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM) researcher analyzing drug cultivation. And much of this comes from the Sierra Tarahumara, a vast network of canyons and mountains.

Two of Mexico’s main criminal organizations operate in the Sierra Tarahumara: the Sinaloa Cartel and Juárez Cartel through its armed wing, known as La Línea.

Over the past 10 years, fighting between these two groups has had a constant ebb and flow.

But both of these criminal heavyweights are having to adjust to many U.S. states decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana. To do so, they have monopolized other commercial activities like alcohol sales and logging, while also extorting the region’s local farmworkers to keep profits alive.

Alcohol monopoly in Chihuahua

Starting from La Junta highway at the entrance to the Sierra Tarahumara, only “authorized” stores can sell alcohol. Criminal organizations have threatened national chains like Oxxo to stop selling alcohol or risk facing retaliation, according to residents, business owners and state officials speaking anonymously for fear of reprisal.

For the most part, according to the cartel operative interviewed by InSight Crime, the alcohol monopoly is in the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel, specifically Noriel Portillo, alias “El Chueco.”

“Only authorized stores can sell alcohol. That way, there is no competition, and all of those earnings go to the organization,” he said.

This started as a direct consequence of the depreciation of marijuana prices, according to the operative. The municipalities under this rule stretch all the way from Bocoyna, Guachochi, Batopilas, Urique, and out to Guadalupe y Calvo.

He added that all alcohol distribution trucks are “stopped at the highways connecting to the Sierra and asked to go back. We maintain our own distribution, and businesses have to buy only from us.”

The cartel is buying massive quantities of alcohol in major cities like Cuauhtémoc or the capital, Chihuahua, and then transporting those products by truck to several municipalities inside the Sierra Tarahumara. They are the ones granting authorization to sell and distribute all sorts of alcohol without any legal permits.

The operative said they are not forcing everyone to sell alcohol, but those who want to must have permission from the cartel.

Alcohol regulatory authorities have virtually no presence in the Sierra Tarahumara, according to the cartel operative.

Most products go for two or three Mexican pesos (roughly $0.10) above the average retail price, which InSight Crime corroborated in several stores. And some restaurants aren’t selling any alcohol out of fear of negotiating with crime groups.

“We had to go with their deal, otherwise we would have to stop selling and close our business,” said a women from a local store in Guachochi.

Timber trade thrives as marijuana falls

San Juanito, a small wooded town at the beginning of the Sierra Tarahumara and the epicenter of fighting between the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels, used to be known as the “San Juanito forest” for its beautiful, thick tree cover. But after years of relentless logging — both legal and illegal — locals now joke and call it the “San Juanito Valley.”

Driving through it, the devastation is no secret: the areas surrounding the main highway are barren, with nothing but wood stumps for miles.

For almost six years, both the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels have relied heavily on the logging industry. The Sierra Tarahumara has historically been a large source of lumber for all of Mexico. With around half of its 16.5 million hectares forested by pine and oak trees, according to Community Technical Consulting, a non-profit organization defending human and land rights in the Sierra Tarahumara, this area provides around 10 million square meters of timber that is sold in bulk to construction companies or for use in building furniture.

With the heavy cartel presence, it’s become almost impossible to know how much of the wood taken into the sawmills is legitimate or tainted by organized crime, either illegally produced by such groups or by legal sawmills forced to pay a tax in order to operate.

People around San Juanito and the neighboring town of Creel were very hesitant to speak out loud about illegal logging. A local artisan told InSight Crime that the illegal timber trade has “everybody’s fingerprints on it.”

“Authorities, politicians, narcos and entire families are in the business,” he said. “But this is something we don’t discuss.”

Extorting local farmworkers

During the summer months, hundreds of men leave the cover of the Sierra Tarahumara to travel northbound to major cities like Cuauhtémoc or Chihuahua to work on apple, tomato, chile, pecan and bean farms. Big companies have established massive operations around these two cities and hire their workforce from all over the state.

But more recently, men leaving the sierra to work have been required to notify cartel operatives in charge of monitoring who leaves and where they go.

A local indigenous farmer returning from an apple tree farm, who spoke with InSight Crime under the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said that crime groups are now demanding a percentage of their earnings on their way back home.

“Sometimes they are the ones who transport us to the farms and back, and they say the illegal toll is payment for the ride,” he said.

It’s not clear why the amount charged varies, but local workers said it ranges from a 5-10% cut of their earnings for a whole season, which amounts to roughly $800 for two full months of work.

Most locals interviewed pointed to the Sinaloa Cartel as the organization behind this operation, but La Línea’s involvement couldn’t be dismissed.

State authorities said they were unaware of this new extortion trend.

Reprinted from InSight Crime, a foundation dedicated to the study of organized crime.

New book tells you where to find 25 unforgettable hikes in western Mexico

John Pint

September 10, 2021

El Manto, Nayarit — Chapter 10 of Outdoors in Western Mexico 3 by John and Susy Pint introduces you to El Manto, a 300-meter-long natural water park in Nayarit.

Our upcoming book, Outdoors in Western Mexico 3, is a collection of writing about 25 sites where you can escape the hustle and bustle of the big city and enjoy the rich biodiversity and geodiversity of western Mexico.

This 207-page tome was published this year by Tente Editorial of Monterrey, Nuevo León, the third in a series. It will be presented to the public in Ajijic, Jalisco, in September and in Guadalajara in October. The series’ origins go back to 1985, when my wife Susana and I decided to settle in Pinar de la Venta, Jalisco, a woodsy community perched atop hills a mile high on the edge of the sprawling Primavera Forest, just west of Guadalajara.

We had arrived after having lived in Saudi Arabia for four years, where we’d often spent the weekend underground, exploring “caves beneath the dunes.”

Naturally, we were anxious to see what kind of caves we might find in Jalisco and neighboring states, so one of the first things we did was to write a letter to the editor of Mexico Desconocido magazine, asking for information on the caving club nearest Guadalajara. Sad to say, our inquiry revealed that there was no caving organization anywhere in western Mexico — so we decided to start our own.

We offered courses in espeleologia, discovered plenty of interested people and started combing the hills for caves.

Huilotán Ecopark, Jalisco — You’ll find a waterfall and a jungle, complete with macaws, at Huilotán Ecopark, located only 25 kilometers north of Guadalajara.

Those caves, however, sometimes turned out to be located in the most godforsaken places you could imagine, perhaps at the end of one of those classic hair-raising mountain roads with a sheer wall on one side and a thousand-foot drop on the other.

Very often the huge, gorgeous cavern we had been told about (“Sí, señor, that cueva goes all the way through la montaña and comes out the other side!”) would turn out to be a miserable little hole penetrating the mountain a grand distance of two meters.

But on the way to or from that hole-in-the-wall, we would frequently stumble upon spectacular waterfalls, delightful hot springs, pristine beaches, mysterious ruins, tangled jungles, gorgeous canyons and stately forests, places well known to the local people but to no one else.

We began to write these places up and publish our stories in the pages of what was then called The Guadalajara Colony Reporter. Eventually, these writings ended up in the first Outdoors book, published by Editorial Ágata in 1998. Of course, we kept on hunting for caves, which continued to lead us to the discovery of more and more natural sites as fascinating as those we already knew.

We kept finding more and more botanical, biological and geological diversity in the places we were visiting, and we were intrigued. “How could there be so many extraordinary places exhibiting so much variety?” we wondered.

Most of what I have been calling western Mexico fits inside a circle 500 kilometers wide with Guadalajara in the middle, so my big question was: what makes this area so special?

The Parangueo Crater in Guanajuato — The Parangueo Crater is one of seven volcanic craters in Guanajuato which supposedly lie in the same configuration as the stars of the Big Dipper.

In time, I learned that within this circle, all five of Mexico’s ecosystems converge. A tapatío (someone from Guadalajara) can head north on Monday and find one ecosystem, go south on Tuesday and end up in another and so on.

I decided to call this confluence of multiple ecosystems a Magic Circle. How many cities in the world lie at the center of a Magic Circle?

Not many!

So it was easy to find enough extraordinary sites to fill volumes 1 and 2 of Outdoors in Western Mexico, and now here comes a third collection. Like the previous volumes, this one presents a microcosm of the rich variety of outdoor sites inside the Magic Circle. Here’s a preview of just a few:

The Geysers of Los Patitos River: In the very first chapter, you’ll find a park full of geysers and hot springs. While the local people always knew there was something special bubbling up in and around Río de Los Patitos (Little Ducks River), few people in Guadalajara — except for an occasional intrepid botanist — suspected that there was a “mini-Yellowstone” just over an hour’s drive from the big city.

At Parque Ecologico Los Hervores you can run out of your tent on a cold winter’s night, jump into a hot pool that’s at just the temperature you fancy and gaze up through billows of steam at the deepest, most star-studded sky you could ever hope to see.

Sabinos River at La Cañada, Jalisco — The stately Montezuma cypresses of the Sabinos River at La Cañada, only eight kilometers north of Lake Chapala.

Parangueo Crater, Guanajuato: Contrast this with what awaits you in Chapter 13. You walk through a 400-meter-long, pitch-black tunnel and emerge at what first seems to be the North Pole: your eyes see ice and snow — but you don’t feel cold! Welcome to Parangueo Crater. Once upon a time, there was an alkaline lake here, but today it’s an otherworldly, shimmering white desert, like hiking across a giant bowl filled with crusty baking soda.

Petroglyphs of Altavista, Nayarit: If all this seems too exotic, turn to Chapter 23 and take a walk at Altavista, near the Pacific coast. The trail leads you through great boulders covered with petroglyphs engraved there over 2,000 years ago by the Tecoxquines (Throat-cutters), whose favorite sport was decapitating prisoners captured during tribal skirmishes. Your reward at the end of your walk? A dip in La Pila del Rey, the King’s Bathtub, a pool of crystal-clear water surrounded by picturesque natural columns of basalt rock.

With this third volume, the grand total of destinations we have described comes to 90. Add to these the 10 sites in my book A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and you now have a total of 100 great places to visit in western Mexico — enough to keep you busy on weekends for the next two years. Enjoy!

• The book Outdoors in Western Mexico 3/Al Aire Libre en las Cercanías de Guadalajara 3 by John and Susy Pint is written both in English and in Spanish and will be available in softcover (250 pesos) or as a hardback (350 pesos) by Tente Editorial. The book will be presented in Ajijic, Jalisco, on September 23 at 2 p.m. in the garden of the Lake Chapala Society. There will also be a Guadalajara book launch on October 16 at the Foro Infantil of Parque Agua Azul at 1 p.m. Click here for more details and updates.

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.

The King’s Bathtub at Petroglyphs of Altavista — The King’s Bathtub awaits you at the end of the 400-meter-long trail through the Petroglyphs of Altavista.

ghost town of El Amparo, Jalisco — In Chapter 3 of *Outdoors in Western Mexico 3*, you’ll learn all about the ghost town of El Amparo, once one of Mexico’s most successful silver mines.

Potrero de Mulas, Jalisco — Discover the serenity of Potrero de Mulas, described in Chapter 22. You only have to do 30 river crossings to get there!

Outdoors in Western Mexico 3 book by John & Susy Pint — *Outdoors in Western Mexico 3* describes — in Spanish and English — 25 places near Guadalajara where you can hike, picnic, and, in some cases, camp.

John and Susy Pint in Dahna desert — Authors Susy and John Pint inside hot, steamy Mossy Cave, located beneath Saudi Arabia’s Dahna Desert.

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