Federal forces carried out search operations in Zapopan on Wednesday.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) is suspected of abducting two members of the navy as retaliation for the arrest of the wife of the cartel’s leader.
Rosalinda González Valencia, wife of Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, was captured in Zapopan, Jalisco, on Monday by soldiers working in conjunction with the federal Attorney General’s Office and the National Intelligence Center.
Suspected CJNG members kidnapped a navy captain’s secretary and his driver in the same municipality the next day.
According to a report by the newspaper Reforma, the two navy personnel were abducted at a shopping center in Zapopan, located in the metropolitan area of Guadalajara. The vehicle in which they had been traveling, a white Jeep, was later found abandoned.
Meanwhile, federal forces carried out an operation in Zapopan on Wednesday to locate and capture El Mencho’s daughter, Laisha Michelle Oseguera González, and her partner, Christian Fernando Gutiérrez Ochoa. Marines raided homes in affluent neighborhoods of Zapopan but neither Oseguera nor Gutiérrez was found.
However, two other people were detained and questioned about the whereabouts of Laisha Oseguera, Reforma reported. Two properties that allegedly belong to members of Los Cuinis, a gang formed by Rosalinda González’s brothers that is considered the CJNG’s financial arm, were seized.
Federal forces also carried out operations in Jalisco, Nayarit, Michoacán and Guanajuato to locate El Mencho, according to military sources cited by Reforma. Some 450 elite soldiers and marines were involved in the search for cartel leader, who is wanted in both Mexico and the United States. Helicopters and drones supported the operations.
“He hides in the mountainous areas of Jalisco, Michoacán and Colima. We think he’s not in the cities anymore,” said Kyle Mori.
Later in 2019, there were reports that the capo was planning to return to his home town in the municipality of Aguililla, where the CJNG is engaged in a turf war with the Cárteles Unidos. However, there has been no confirmation that that occurred and El Mencho’s whereabouts remains a mystery.
President López Obrador and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard at a presidential press conference. Ebrard has stated that the proposed electricity reform is not up for discussion at the meeting.
United States lawmakers, the governor of Texas and business organizations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico have raised concerns about the Mexican government’s stance on energy and migration as President López Obrador attends Thursday’s North American Leaders Summit in Washington D.C.
A group of seven Democratic Party lawmakers led by Texas Representative Veronica Escobar wrote to United States President Joe Biden on Wednesday to urge him to address energy policy concerns in the “strongest possible terms” when he meets with López Obrador.
“As your administration hosts our United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) partners … this week, we write to share our increasingly growing concerns by Mexico’s disregard for the international commitments it has made to the companies in the energy sector under the USMCA and the climate consequences of such actions,” said the letter addressed to Biden and five other high-ranking U.S. officials.
“North American energy integration is key to our continued global competitiveness in relation to China, Russia and the European Union. Our energy markets, infrastructure and trade are already integrated and independent across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. In fact, North America is on the verge of energy self-sufficiency. Because of this, energy was enshrined as a central component of this historic agreement between our three nations. Mexico and … López Obrador, however, continue to willfully undermine this agreement to protect state-owned energy companies, Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), while disadvantaging private investment in energy – including from the United States and Canada,” said Escobar and other Democrat lawmakers from Texas, California and Pennsylvania
The legislators said that “in addition to a slew of administrative and regulatory actions against private investors, President López Obrador has spearheaded major amendments to two laws – the Power Industry Law and the Hydrocarbons Law – to change market rules in favor of Pemex and CFE and against private companies.”
Senator John Neely Kennedy of Louisiana, a Republican, wrote to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Wednesday to express his concern about López Obrador’s treatment of U.S. energy companies operating in Mexico.
“… While AMLO’s strategy to deal with Mexican drug cartels is using ‘hugs, not bullets’ his strategy to deal with American energy companies is quite different,” he wrote.
Kennedy noted that United States-owned fuel storage terminals have been shut down, adding that “multiple facilities” remain closed and under the the supervision of the National Guard “despite the companies’ continued efforts to work with AMLO’s regulators.”
“… AMLO’s strategy includes undermining other privately-owned, American renewable energy facilities. These companies could be the next to be seized, and it is unacceptable. It is obvious what is going on here – AMLO’s shutting down all foreign competition for his state-owned company, Pemex, and so far he’s getting zero resistance from U.S. officials in the Biden administration,” the senator wrote.
“… To protect energy investments in the region from AMLO’s nationalistic actions, I implore you to begin aggressive engagement with the AMLO administration and urge the White House to immediately initiate a dialogue on this specific issue between our countries.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote to Biden to raise concerns about border security and energy and to ask the U.S. president to address them in his meetings with López Obrador.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott was one of several politicians and business leaders who have raised concerns about the Mexican government’s stance on immigration and energy reform.
“Despite numerous calls to action, your administration refuses to enforce our immigration laws and to secure our southern border. Unfortunately, Mexico has also been unwilling to stem the flow of illegal immigration and thus contributed to the open border situation,” he wrote.
“… I urge you to engage the Mexican government about ways to prevent the smuggling of individuals, drugs, and the continued flow of illegal immigrants into Texas,” Abbott said.
He also urged Biden to “take action to protect American assets from seizure by the Mexican government, potentially in violation of international trade laws.”
“… It has also come to my attention that the Mexican government is using militarized police forces to prevent the operation of U.S. businesses. … In order to protect energy investments in the region, I implore your administration to begin aggressive engagement with Mexico and immediately initiate a dialogue between our countries,” the governor wrote.
He said the closure of U.S.-owned facilities in Mexico came “on the heels of continued regulatory assault on American companies by the Mexican government at a time when energy prices are rising across our nation.”
The United States Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Business Coordinating Council, a Mexican umbrella organization that represents 12 business groups, also raised concerns about Mexico’s energy sector plans and policies in a letter addressed to Biden, López Obrador and Trudeau.
“The Canadian and U.S. private sectors are deeply concerned about efforts by the Mexican government to reduce private competition in the energy sector,” they said.
“Attempts to favor state-owned enterprises at the expense of renewable and other private energy providers only undermine investment certainty, put at risk ambitious shared goals to address climate change, and promise both added cost and diminished opportunity for our countries’ workers.”
Writing on behalf of the North American business community, the three organizations said that “it is imperative that the three governments hold each other accountable to full implementation of USMCA in order to reap the benefits the agreement provides as an economic framework for advancing our shared prosperity and job creation.”
They also said that the U.S., Mexican and Canadian governments must “guarantee open and transparent investment environments to enhance our continental competitiveness.”
In addition to energy and migration, Cuba could be a potentially contentious issue at Thursday’s trilateral summit given that López Obrador supports the Cuban government and the United States is a harsh critic of the regime.
“Our view is that we’re going to have positive results, we have an optimistic view of this meeting but that doesn’t mean that an issue on which there are different positions can’t arise,” he told reporters outside the Mexican Embassy in Washington.
“If the reform is approved next year there will be noise about it but at the moment the only thing that Biden can do is express concern,” said Adrián Duhalt, a postdoctoral fellow in Mexico energy studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.
“I can’t imaging Trudeau or Biden telling AMLO ‘you have to get rid of the reform,’” said Juan Carlos Baker, managing director of Ansley Consultores and a trade negotiator for the previous federal government.
“… We can’t expect much from the meeting,” he said, adding that the main focus will be on the region’s economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
Referring to Mexico’s willingness or otherwise to uphold USMCA provisions, Baker said: “In Mexico, sometimes it seems that we want access to the United States market and our compatriots’ remittances but when it comes to taking on a deeper commitment we don’t like it and we return to the dialectic of sovereignty, full respect [for foreign countries] and non-intervention [in their internal affairs].”
The North American Leaders Summit is scheduled to take place at the White House late Thursday afternoon. López Obrador will also meet with Biden and Trudeau separately in the United States capital.
Racing patrol trucks at the starting line on a Zacatecas highway.
Two police officers in Zacatecas were relieved of their duties and will be punished for drag racing their patrol vehicles after a video of their race went viral.
The recording shows two police vehicles side by side, revving their engines while they wait for the starting signal. When a referee standing between the vehicles throws his hands down, they accelerate from the starting line.
The officers are from the municipality of Río Grande, 140 kilometers north of Zacatecas city.
Río Grande Mayor Mario Córdova said he contacted Police Chief Jaime González Barriento as soon as he became aware of the race. Córdova added that the officers’ actions “betray[ed] the trust of citizens,” and that his government “will not tolerate bad actions from any member of the municipal administration.”
“It is very sad that on this occasion we have to speak about things that do not benefit our municipality. We are already working on training so that our police officers do not make mistakes like these again,” the mayor added.
The Río Grande municipal government said it responded swiftly to the incident. “Corrective actions and sanctions have already been carried out in accordance with the law against the officers involved, who are away from work while their situations are determined,” it said in a statement.
An underfunded researcher at the National Autonomous University (UNAM) can finally obtain the microscope essential to her conservation work after winning a financial award.
Australian-born scientist Anastazia Teresa Banaszak spent two years trying to secure funding to buy the microscope for coral reef conservation work in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System. She was announced as one of 10 winners in the 2021 Ben Barres Spotlight Awards, which provide funds to researchers in biology and medicine from lesser represented groups, or from countries with limited research funding.
Prize winners will receive up to $6,000 to aid their work.
Banaszak’s team works to conserve endangered corals in the reef system, which extends from Isla Contoy, located off the northeast coast of Quintana Roo, to the Bay Islands in Honduras. It has been under threat from sargassum and a rise in water temperatures since 2018.
The team uses cryo-preservation to reproduce corals in a lab before replanting them in depleted and damaged reefs. The scientists subsequently monitor the lab-grown coral to determine the success of their assisted reproduction program.
The specialized microscope will be used to measure the quality of coral sperm before and after it is frozen in the lab.
Banaszak said that research funding is rarely available for such specialized work. “We have been trying to get funding to buy a microscope for two years now but granting agencies generally cannot cover more than bare lab expenses and a postdoc salary. This award provides us with a wonderful opportunity to move forward with producing a quality coral biorepository in Mexico while there are still coral colonies left to work with,” she said.
The other winners of this year’s Ben Barres awards were from India, the United States, Rwanda and South Africa. The awards are run by eLife, a non-profit organization which promotes ethical scientific research.
Mexico recorded its lowest daily COVID-19 death toll since April 2020 on Tuesday, while new coronavirus cases were below 1,000 for a third consecutive day.
The Health Ministry reported 37 additional fatalities, the lowest daily total since April 20 last year when 26 deaths were registered and Mexico’s death toll rose to 712. The ministry also reported 37 fatalities on June 14, 2021.
Total fatalities now number 291,241, but Tuesday’s death toll is another sign that the third wave of the pandemic is on the wane and evidence that vaccines are stopping people from dying.
The Health Ministry also reported 735 new cases on Tuesday, lifting Mexico’s accumulated tally to just under 3.85 million. New infections numbered 775 on Monday and 942 on Sunday, figures well below the November daily average of just over 2,500.
In other COVID-19 news:
• A consignment of 596,700 doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in Mexico City on Wednesday, increasing the total number of Pfizer shots the government has received to just under 39 million. The latest shipment could come in handy for the inoculation of youths aged 15 to 17 because the Pfizer vaccine is the only one approved for use on children in Mexico.
The Health Ministry said in a statement that Mexico has received almost 1119.2 million pre-packaged doses of seven different vaccines, while an additional 47 million doses have been bottled in the country.
All adults have been offered at least one dose and more than 80% of the 18+ population is vaccinated. Mexico City has the highest vaccination rate in the country with more than 90% of adults having received shots.
• Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum spoke to the British Broadcasting Corporation about the pandemic and the capital’s high vaccination rate on Wednesday.
Asked how Mexico City was able to achieve one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, the mayor responded:
“We believe in education above everything. For example the use of masks we never put it as a mandatory thing, we just explained that it was very, very important for the city and we are probably the city that right now and during the pandemic used more masks. And it’s the same for vaccination. We have 95% of all the adults in Mexico City vaccinated already.”
Sheinbaum, a leading contender to succeed President López Obrador, said the high vaccination rate would aid Mexico City’s economic recovery.
“Especially in terms of labor. We lost a lot of formal jobs and we are now on the path of economic recovery,” she said.
“… Cities all over the world have many difficult problems in terms of reparation to the economy. But right now we have a plan that I think is going to work.”
• Campeche Governor Layda Sansores announced Tuesday that the use of face masks will be optional in government offices for workers who are fully vaccinated. The Morena party governor said last week she believed it was time to do away with the Gulf state’s mask mandate.
Sansores questioned the effectiveness of masks on Tuesday and asserted they have become “almost like a fetish.”
“[People] use them however they want to,” she said during her weekly social media program.
A new report by the Institute of the Americas predicts Mexico's greenhouse gas emissions could rise up to 25% in the next nine years.
Mexico will need to implement additional policies to meet its 2030 target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 22%, according to an analysis by the Institute of the Americas.
The institute, an independent, inter-American organization that promotes public-private cooperation across the Americas, said in a report that “Mexico’s rollback of support to renewable energy and its response to the pandemic has put the country’s emissions on an upward path.”
“… Emissions will ramp up again as the economy recovers,” the institute said, predicting they will increase to 774–852 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) in 2030, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry initiatives.
Mexico is already the world’s 12th largest polluter (84th on a per capita basis), the report noted, with emissions of just under 680 MtCO2e annually, a figure equivalent to 1.5% of global emissions. The institute’s prediction entails a 14–25% increase in Mexico’s emissions over the next nine years.
The institute also said that Mexico will fall short of its interim goal of 35% clean energy by 2024.
Mexico ranked second among Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries that garner revenues from hydrocarbon exploration and extraction. Institute of the Americas
“The government is now favoring fossil fuels with the construction of a new refinery; a new budget allocation for the modernization of coal, diesel, gas and oil-fueled power plants; and the cancellation of long-term power auctions,” it said.
“Lastly, a recent energy bill effectively halting private renewable energy investments prioritizes the government’s own aging fossil-fuel plants. This reform could force changes in the electricity dispatch order that would significantly increase CO2 emissions,” the institute said.
It noted in its report — entitled Nationally Determined Contributions Across the Americas: A Comparative Hemispheric Analysis — that the impacts of climate change are already being felt in Mexico and the broader region. It cited Hurricanes Lota and Eta smashing into Central America last year, massive forest fires across the Amazon and severe drought in Mexico, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay as examples.
The institute said that many countries in the region have “ambitious climate commitments for 2030 and 2050” but noted that they lack the national and external funding to achieve them.
However, Mexico, which has an estimated US $6 billion funding gap, and Brazil — which together are “responsible for over 50% of the region’s overall emission — are both lagging compared to the region’s collective efforts to tackle the global climate crisis,” the report said.
“The actions of these two countries could also have potentially negative region-wide effects. In both cases, their updated NDCs [national determined contributions] are no more ambitious, and their respective governments are implementing policies and regulations that could in fact reverse mitigation efforts. In short, if they were not yet on track to meet climate pledges before, they are now on an upward emissions trend,” it said.
President Lopez Obrador has touted his environmental credibility, but the institute says Mexico is “on an upward emissions trend.” lopezobrador.org.mx.
The institute also said that Mexico had been at the forefront of the fight against climate change, both domestically and internationally, until the current government took office.
President López Obrador has championed the continued use of fossil fuels and primarily points to his tree-planting employment program – which he describes as the world’s largest reforestation scheme – to illustrate his climate credentials.
One visitor arrived in Cancún for a 15-day holiday but was given just 10 days on his FMM.
It once was all but guaranteed that a visitor entering Mexico would receive a permit to stay for 180 days, the maximum length of time allowed under current Mexican immigration rules.
But many aspects of immigration policy have been changing over the past few years, and length of stay for visitors appears to be one of them. More and more travelers have been reporting that they were allowed 30 or fewer days to complete their travels in Mexico.
A visitor’s permit, known as a forma migratoria múltiple (FMM), allows the permit-holder to be in the country for “a maximum validity of 180 days,” according the National Immigration Institute’s (INM) website. For the United States, Canada, Australia and much of Europe, it is the only Mexican-issued document needed to travel within the country － a visa is not required.
The immigration agent at the point of entry (an airport, land border or seaport) fills in a portion of the FMM and writes the number of days the visitor is permitted to stay in the country. The agent may also ask for documents like hotel reservations, return flights or tours booked to prove that the purpose of the visit is that which the visitor is claiming.
None of that is new. What is new is that “maximum 180 days” no longer means 180 days by default. Instead, social media reports and immigration experts indicate that an increasing number of people are receiving 30 days or less on their visitor’s permit, rather than the 180.
A Facebook user posted this FMM wondering if the agent’s scribble was his signature or the number 180. Consensus was that it was the latter.
Though the INM has not released an official public statement on the change of policy, an INM official in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, acknowledged having heard of the issue but said the manner in which the federal criteria for entry is applied is at the full discretion of the agent at the point of entry. While some nationalities face restrictions, visitors from countries without restrictions still “supposedly” get 180 days, the agent said.
An agent on the INM help line was similarly brief in the information she was able to provide.
“We don’t have information about the reasons they are giving less time …” the agent said. “We don’t know if they have received some notification or internal memo.”
She did, however, have advice for incoming travelers.
“You have to show your return flight, that you have economic solvency … if you have tickets for tours, tickets for where you’re going to stay, it is also necessary to mention that,” she said.
Guy Courchesne, a Mexico City-based recruiter of foreign teachers who also works on immigration issues, said that he gets at least 20 calls a day on the topic of changing FMM lengths of stay, mostly from people who expected to get 180 days but received as few as 10, with no recourse to extend the permit. The change appears to be affecting travelers of all nationalities, he said.
Earlier this year, one option for people with expired documents was to get temporary residency through a pandemic amnesty program. But that program was for people whose expired travel documents were issued prior to 2019, so more recent arrivals do not qualify, Courchesne said.
Many travelers have flocked to Facebook to discuss the changes and share their personal experiences. Though the majority still report receiving the standard 180 days, those that receive less have been frustrated by reports that many local INM offices no longer offer FMM extensions.
Some users have even recounted being advised by agents to overstay their permits and pay for a new one at the airport when they leave. Though feasible, this option presents the risk of detention and deportation if at any point authorities ask undocumented travelers to prove that they are legally in the country.
Facebook user Alex Ward of the U.K. had to consider that and other options when he received a shorter-than-expected length of stay on his FMM. Ward arrived in Cancún for a 15-day vacation with his partner at the end of October. After leaving the airport, a friend advised him to check the length of stay on his immigration document; to his disappointment, he was only given 10 days.
“Really weird and total downer on the holiday since we are literally here for two weeks and the agent who issued it seemed very friendly at the time and asked us how long and where we were going …” Ward wrote on Facebook.
“We are here for a relaxing [beach] holiday but now will be concerned about this. Not a good way to encourage tourism …. [Probably] won’t come back to Mexico after this which is a real shame as I love it.”
There was no doubt about this document. The visitor was granted the maximum of 180 days.
Ward’s experience appears to be the exception, rather than the rule. The majority of social media users on the Facebook group Expats in Mexico report receiving the full 180 days, even when they intend to stay only for a few days.
One such Facebook user was Canadian traveler Rhiannon Mariah. She was worried after another Canadian friend was given only 30 days on her FMM. To avoid getting her trip cut short, Mariah decided to fill out her FMM online, where the length of stay is automatically set to 180 days.
Though the immigration agents at the airport have the discretion to change that number, in her case they did not: she was given the full six months.
Some social media users have claimed that repeat travelers are especially likely to get shorter stays. For at least some returning travelers, that appears to be true. Oscar Alvarenga of Honduras flew into Mexico City hoping to spend several months traveling while working remotely online. It was his second trip to Mexico this year, and he was surprised to receive only 45 days on his FMM. He asked for an extension but was denied.
“I told [the agent] that the last time I came to Mexico, five months ago, I received 180 days. But he told me he was not able to do it again,” Alvarenga said.
Though most people still appear to be receiving 180 days on their visitors’ permits, travelers must increasingly adhere to a motto that is applicable to many aspects of life in Mexico: be ready for anything.
Proof of a return flight, hotel stay and documents demonstrating adequate funds for the duration of the trip can strengthen a visitor’s case to get the permit length they want. And for those hoping to live in Mexico for less than a year, temporary residency is often a viable option.
About one-sixth of the 2022 federal budget will be used to pay pensions as a record 1.17 trillion pesos (US $56.6 billion) will end up in the pockets of retired workers next year.
According to the 7-trillion-peso (US $338.8 billion) budget approved in the lower house of Congress last Sunday, the outlay on pensions will increase 6.2% in 2022 and represent 16.5% of the total budget.
The 1.17 trillion pesos will go to retired government employees, including those who worked for state-owned companies such as Pemex and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), and other former workers covered by Social Security Institute (IMSS) and State Workers Institute (ISSSTE) pension schemes.
The federal government’s pension costs have been increasingly steadily in recent years, rising from 736 billion pesos in 2015 to just under 990 billion pesos in 2019 before breaking the 1-trillion-peso barrier for the first time in 2020.
Ricardo Velázquez Luna, a pensions expert and general director of financial consultancy Asesores Patrimoniales, told the newspaper El País that the government’s snowballing pension costs are the result of “bad planning in the pensions system that wasn’t corrected until 1997.”
He predicted that pension costs will continue to grow over the next five to six years.
IMSS will get about 1 trillion pesos in funding next year and almost two-thirds of that amount – 636.4 billion pesos – will go to pay pensions.
Velázquez said the proportion of IMSS’ outlay on pensions is too high, leaving the institute with limited funds to spend on healthcare.
“They [the government] has to allocate it resources that can be used … [to benefit] Mexicans’ health,” he said.
Facing a similar scenario, ISSSTE will spend 70% of its 397-billion-peso budget on pensions, while Pemex and the CFE will distribute just under 70 billion and 50 billion pesos, respectively, to its former workers next year.
More than 238 billion pesos will go to the payment of the government’s “wellbeing pensions” for seniors next year, a 76% increase compared to 2021.
Velázquez said the government will need to collect more tax to cover its pension expenses and other funding obligations.
However, 56% of economically active people don’t pay taxes because they work in the informal sector, according to data from the national statistics agency INEGI. That figure rose recently as more people moved into that sector after losing jobs in the formal economy during the coronavirus pandemic.
A cougar surprised residents on Tuesday in Tamazulápam del Espíritu Santo, a Mixe community in the Oaxaca Sierra.
The 2.5 meter cat was first sighted in the undergrowth of an avocado tree, and later captured by local authorities who released it in an area of woodland.
Police and residents struggled with the cougar for a few minutes to restrain it, the newspaper El Universal reported. A video posted on social media showed the bound animal being pulled from a property on its back.
The feisty feline was loaded, with some difficulty, onto a police pickup truck, where it attempted to free itself by leaping to escape the vehicle, despite being shackled.
Community spokesperson Romeo Sánchez said it was the first time a cougar related incident had been reported in the area, despite their natural habitat only being one kilometer away.
#ÚltimoMinuto
¿Qué le parece? Un puma ingresó a un domicilio en #Tamazulápam del Espíritu Santo, comunidad de la zona Mixe de #Oaxaca.
Pobladores y policías municipales lograron capturarlo y regresarlo a su hábitat.
El video lo comparte @carreraOax. pic.twitter.com/n4GZsoF8YW
Diego Guzmán related the events on social media. “This morning a cougar arrived near my parents’ house in Tama [Tamazulápam], probably looking for food. It took refuge by an avocado tree owned by my neighbors; after a few hours community members and the authorities managed to capture and later release it,” he said.
Oaxaca is the natural habitat of five species of felines: the cougar, the jaguar, the ocelot, the lynx, and the jaguarundi.
Zapatistas hijacking a train bound for Cuernavaca, Morelos. Ministry of Culture
She had the most fashionable hotel in all of Cuernavaca in the early 1900s, but then lost it all in a whirlwind of violence, running for her life.
Rosa Eleanor King was born in Karachi in 1865 to a tea plantation family during the British Empire. These beginnings did not suggest that she would be a witness to the Mexican Revolution, but she got an up-close-and-personal view of it as the fighting came to Cuernavaca. She even hosted the Revolution’s military leaders and high-level political figures in her hotel.
As an adult, she first immigrated to the United States, where she met and married Norman Robson King. From there, the couple traveled to Mexico and both fell in love with it, visiting various times, then moving to Mexico City. In 1905, they visited Cuernavaca, but it did not quite strike their fancy.
In August of 1907, Norman died suddenly, leaving behind Rosa and their two small children. Rather than return to England, King built a new life in Mexico, returning to Cuernavaca. She arrived during the rainy season, when everything was lush and green, improving her opinion of the place.
Prior to this, she had never worked, never mind run a business, but she did understand the expat community and others in the leisure class in Mexico.
British citizen Rosa King was born and raised in Mumbai. This portrait of her was taken in the 1910s in Veracruz.
She rented an old grocery store and turned it into an English-style teahouse, a place for foreigners and upper-class Mexicans to pass the time. She added what she called a “curiosity shop,” filled with local handcrafts, especially ceramics. To keep it filled, she started a ceramic workshop in a nearby indigenous community.
By 1909, the businesses were doing well enough for her to take the Morelos governor’s suggestion that she buy and remodel the Bella Vista Hotel in the center of Cuernavaca. Her modern update of the hotel opened in June of 1910, right as she was hearing rumblings of the activities of revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
She was well aware of the poverty of the countryside and the hard life of the peasants and sympathized with them. But she had trouble believing that Zapata’s efforts would amount to more than any of the other uprisings in Mexico before him.
Zapata did enter Cuernavaca to meet with new president Francisco I. Madero after previous president Porfirio Díaz had been ousted after more than 30 years in office. Zapata assured King of her and her hotel’s safety, and he kept that promise.
The hotel weathered the initial storm of the Mexican Revolution, even as King’s wealthy patrons fled. Politicians and military leaders from various factions of the revolution took their place.
But then this changed with the coming of a counter-coup against Madero that brought Victoriano Huerta to power. The various rebel factions, including the Zapatistas, were incensed. Fighting escalated.
An early 20th-century postcard with an image of King’s version of the hotel.
Rosa still hoped to save her hotel, but warfare destroyed the railroad connection to Mexico City and the Zapatistas had laid siege to Cuernavaca.
When federal troops decided that they could no longer hold it, King went with the last column of soldiers out of the city, fleeing into the mountains. This is the climax and by far the bloodiest part of the story, as the Zapatistas began to pick off members of the caravan. Of 8,000 people, only 2,000 made it to safety, but Rosa was one of them.
This tale is chronicled in her book, Tempest Over Mexico, published in 1935. It also tells the story of her experiences through the rest of the war, when she lived in Mexico City, then Veracruz.
She returned to Cuernavaca after the Zapatistas were driven out in 1916, only to find that there was no way to rebuild in a city that was all but destroyed. Later, her property was declared abandoned, and she lost the title to it.
After the fighting was completely over, her children settled in Mexico City, but Rosa decided to return to Cuernavaca.
There was no hope for the hotel, nor for any other kind of business for King due to her health, but she felt she belonged there and stayed in Cuernavaca until her death in 1955.
Rosa King’s grandson, John Barnett, at front with driver, in 1930s Mexico.
What strikes me while reading her book, especially near the end, is how Rosa came to terms with all this.
Several times during the story, she talks about feeling that she wasn’t or shouldn’t have been affected by the Revolution because she was a foreigner. But by the end of the memoir, she discards this notion, deciding that she was a worm in a furrow that the farmer would not stop for (her analogy).
Despite losing everything — and almost her life — King expressed no bitterness at her fate nor anger at Zapata. The Revolution was inevitable, she said, considering conditions for the poor at the time.
The hotel was rebuilt and still exists by the city’s Juárez garden but now houses a number of shops.
In the 1950s, King was offered US $100,000 for the movie rights to her book, a fortune in those days. She turned it down because they wanted to make changes to the story.
This would be a problem later for her family as a later attempt to make a Hollywood movie stumbled over the same problem: great-grandson Phillip Barnett believes that one problem for would-be moviemakers is that King’s story has no love interest.
The Hotel Bella Vista, long after King lost her title to it. INAH
“It is not enough that she was a strong woman surviving an impossible circumstance,” he says.
Rosa’s initial descendants stayed in Mexico, but over the generations they have migrated north. Boarding school in Canada had much to do with this as various generations got their education there, made contacts and settled down.
Most are descended from Rosa’s daughter Vera, with last names such as Barnett, Pantalone and Dawe.
Few are left in Mexico, but Mexico is part of the family’s identity, and one member even decided to return to the land of his grandmother.
Phillip Barnett was raised north of the border but calls himself a rebel and returned south.
Perhaps it is more accurate to say that he inherited that aspect of Rosa’s personality that could not be happy anywhere else.
Architectural features such as its distinctive arches are all that’s left of the former hotel, which now houses several shops in downtown Cuernavaca.
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.
