It's looking to be a good year for US airlines in Mexico.
U.S. airlines are set to enjoy a record summer for traffic to Mexican destinations as demand continues on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic and an effective vaccine drive in the United States.
In June, U.S. carriers transported more than 2.2 million passengers to Mexico, beating the record for the busiest month ever that was set in March 2018. The June figure was 24% higher than that of June 2019.
Between January and May of this year, 81.7% of foreign tourists who entered the country were from the United States. Likewise, almost 59% of travelers to the United States were from Mexico in the first quarter of this year, according to an analysis by the Center for Tourism Research and Competitiveness Anáhuac (Cicotur).
The biggest beneficiaries of the spike have been American Airlines, United Airlines and Mexican airline Volaris. Another Mexican airline, Viva Aerobus, has also benefited, due in part to the collapse of domestic rival Interjet.
However, in the main U.S. airlines have been better positioned to capitalize from high demand.
Roberto Montalvo, an academic at the Universidad Iberoamericana, explained that while vaccines had helped drive the demand for U.S. carriers, there were other factors at play. The regrading of Mexican air safety by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last May, which prevents Mexican airlines from offering new routes, increasing the frequency of trips, or using additional airplanes, had given U.S. airlines an advantage.
“The demand was always going to start coming back for business and pleasure, and even for health reasons, such as through the famous vaccine tourism … the ones who can meet the demand are the American lines, because they are able to do it,” he said.
Montalvo added that the budget air travel market should recover with ease, while longer distance travel could pose challenges. “The Mexican market is very volatile in terms of prices … In the middle and low segment [demand] will be determined by cost, so to the extent that Volaris, Viva and even Aeroméxico offer good prices, they will be able to recover market without problem. However, when you go on a trip where cost is not the main issue, but services, schedules and even luggage play a more prominent role, it will be more difficult to recover the market,” he said.
Gasoline sold by Pemex in Guadalajara, Jalisco, contains excessive levels of aromatics, base components of the fuel and a major contaminant.
According to Mexican regulations, 25% of gasoline content should be aromatics – mixtures of chemicals such as benzene, toluene and xylene – but gas supplied to Pemex stations in Guadalajara from the state oil company’s refinery in Salamanca, Guanajuato, is up to 35% aromatics, according to a report by the newspaper El Universal.
The excessive levels of aromatics, which make air pollution worse and can cause engine problems, are present in both regular and premium gasoline sold in the Jalisco capital.
The Salamanca refinery, which also supplies gasoline to other parts of Mexico, doesn’t have the infrastructure to produce gas that meets Mexican rules for aromatics levels.
“The problem is not exclusive to that area,” El Universal said, referring to the metropolitan area of Guadalajara, where some 2.5 million vehicles clog the streets.
“[The vehicles of] millions of Mexicans currently consume gasoline and diesel with specifications that don’t meet the quality norms established by energy and environmental authorities.”
Pemex was supposed to reduce the aromatics content of all gasoline it produces in Salamanca to 25% by the end of last year.
But it sought an extension to the deadline until the refinery has “the necessary conditions and infrastructure to comply with the specification … for the metropolitan area of Guadalajara.”
Pemex said there is a “bottleneck in the availability of hydrogen” at the Salamanca refinery, which prevents full compliance with aromatics norms.
The Energy Regulatory Commission granted an extension in February, allowing Pemex to maintain the excessive levels of aromatics in fuel it sends to Guadalajara until December 31, 2024.
Therefore, Pemex gas stations in Guadalajara or stations supplied by the state oil company’s Salamanca refinery likely won’t have fuel that meets rules for aromatics until January 1, 2025.
The border wall makes it harder for endangered jaguars, whose habitat runs through both the US and Mexico, to reproduce. Edwin Butter/Shutterstock
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has asked the United States to stop building along the border wall due to its negative impacts on the biodiversity of surrounding land.
In a statement released on July 23, UNESCO urged the U.S. not merely to swiftly halt construction of the border wall, citing the potential impact on a 2,700-square-mile World Heritage site in Mexico, but to radically restore ecologically sensitive land in both the U.S. and Mexico that has been fragmented by previous building work.
The resolution follows a 2017 petition made by a number of conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, which sought to put the adjacent 2,700-square-mile World Heritage site El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar — located in the state of Sonora in Mexico — on UNESCO’s In Danger list, which means that the site is in danger of losing its World Heritage status.
The Tohono O’odham Nation of Sonora, who have historically inhabited El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar as well as swaths of the Sonoran Desert in both the U.S. and Mexico, have also called for the restoration of ecosystems in the area surrounding the border wall. The tribal nation’s lands begin south of Casa Grande, Arizona, and include parts of Pinal, Pima and Maricopa counties in that state before continuing south into Mexico.
El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2013 due to the region’s extensive biodiversity.
An image from the El Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in Sonora. México Natural
These lands — which include the second-largest designation of tribal land in the United States and the home of sacred sites used for ceremonial purposes — were ruptured when construction of the wall began. Members of the tribe living across the border in Mexico have found themselves increasingly isolated from the majority of the tribe in Arizona since the 62-mile boundary wall was constructed.
A mixture of desert, ocean and volcanic ecosystems, the biosphere is home to a variety of flora and fauna, including the endemic cholla cactus, which does not grow anywhere else in the world.
Social and political difficulties caused by the border wall notwithstanding, if construction were allowed to continue, it would cut through this reserve, likely causing damage to the ecology of the area.
“Already the border wall has had an immensely negative impact on wildlife on both sides of the border,” says Alex Olivera of the Center for Biological Diversity. “The wildlife corridors in this area have been around for centuries, yet the construction of the border wall has severed and fragmented these crucial habitats.”
Before former president Donald Trump’s vision of a wall stretching the full 1,954 miles between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific was even fully realized, wildlife conservationists lobbied for a halt to construction, citing the risk to species survival that would be caused by isolating breeding populations. President Joe Biden, upon taking office, paused its construction, but by then, the Trump administration had already managed to construct nearly all of the planned barrier in southern Arizona.
For Mike Alcalde, documentary filmmaker at México Natural, UNESCO’s backing of the conservation efforts in this area could not, therefore, be more propitiously timed.
Construction of the United States-Mexico border wall at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in southern Arizona. Laiken Jordahl/Center for Biological Diversity
“It is not enough to simply leave the border area to become a wasteland in the aftermath of the damage already done,” he remarks. “Biden’s executive order pausing border wall construction was a significant first step, but now both the Biden and López Obrador administrations must collaborate to reverse the damage done by the construction of the wall on both sides of the border.”
For the endangered and elusive North American jaguar, the border wall means the destruction of migration routes and the protected terrain in which they have been making a gradual comeback after being hunted to near extinction in the 1960s. The most recent segments to undergo construction have been in the remote, mountainous terrain through which the jaguars pass to breed.
The interruption of territory critical to their movements has resulted in a significant decline in sightings since 2016.
As the effects of climate change and human interference send animal population numbers across the globe into freefall, it is imperative that areas of natural biodiversity are not simply preserved but encouraged to grow. It is the only way the likes of the North American jaguar, the Mexican gray wolf, and the Sonoran pronghorn hope to regain a footing in population numbers.
It can be done: the Janos Biosphere Reserve in Janos, Chihuahua, is a prairie ecosystem well-known for its protection of species such as the pronghorn and for the successful reintroduction of the American bison into its grasslands.
In a little over a decade, the herd of bison there has grown from 23 individuals to nearly 150, prompting the introduction of a second herd in Coahuila in collaboration with the Natural Protected Areas Commission (Conanp).
The Janos Biosphere Reserve in Chihuahua successfully reintroduced the American bison into its prairie grasslands environment.
It is also vital, however, that in working to restore the ecosystems around the border wall, the governments of Mexico and the United State collaborate with existing borderland communities.
“No one is saying that the border area is not a complicated space,” continues Alcalde, “which is exactly why in order to really move forward, policy making needs to be made with cross-governmental agreement as well as strongly featuring the voices of the region’s indigenous communities, biologists and conservationists. Any other choice condemns it to being a dead zone.”
The U.S.-Mexico border continues to be one of the world’s most contentious regions, Alcalde says, but one that is almost always seen through the prism of human movement. The UNESCO World Heritage intervention reminds us that the area has a great deal more in evidence, and always has, being rich in and harboring unique levels of biodiversity.
Whatever the frontier is, it is definitely so much more than just a border.
Shannon Collins is an environment correspondent at Ninth Wave Global, an environmental organization and think tank. She writes from Campeche.
Roberto Aguilar, grandson of the first Aguilar to hold office, has served as mayor twice.
One family in Chiapas has guarded a political dynasty for more than 80 years.
The Aguilar family has been in office in some form in Ixtapa, 45 kilometers east of Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, since 1938.
In the June 6 elections, the family held onto the mayoral post in the municipality, and although they lost a race for federal deputy, they made further gains by winning a mayoral post in the nearby municipality of Bochil.
The story began when Ausencio G. Aguilar became mayor of Ixtapa in 1938 under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) banner, and was elected on another three occasions. Since Ausencio Aguilar took power, seven mayors in the municipality have had the surname Aguilar over the last eight decades.
Grandson Roberto Aguilar was mayor for two terms, from 1999 to 2001 and from 2011 to 2012. That year, he handed over command to his cousin José Antonio Ochoa Aguilar, who governed from 2012 to 2015. Before he was able to announce a successor, Roberto Aguilar took power again, and then delivered his son Jordán Aguilar to office. Jordán Aguilar was reelected in 2018, allegedly through vote buying.
In 2015, the dynasty widened. Roberto Aguilar’s daughter and Ausencio Aguilar’s granddaughter, Adriana Aguilar, won a seat for the state Congress. She had worked previously in the state court.
She left her seat to run as an alternate candidate for federal deputy alongside her father but they lost. Roberto Aguilar had also been a state deputy between terms as mayor from 2003 to 2006.
In January, Adriana Aguilar declared her reverence for the democratic model. “Public offices are bestowed … they are opportunities for us to do our best,” she said.
However, many residents saw that as a mockery, the newspaper El Universal reported, citing the belief among residents that the family only does what is necessary for it to remain in power.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story erroneously stated the year in which Lázaro Cárdenas was first elected as Mexico’s president. He was elected in 1934.
The refinery site before and after mangroves were cleared.
The Dos Bocas oil refinery is being built on land on the coast of Tabasco that Pemex promised to preserve until the second half of this decade, Environment Ministry (Semarnat) documents indicate.
Analyzed by the news agency Bloomberg, the public documents show that in 2006 and 2007 the state oil company committed to protecting the site, which included a rare mangrove forest, in exchange for nearby drilling rights.
Semarnat allowed Pemex to develop oil and gas fields in the area for a period of 20 years on the condition that it abstain from building any new infrastructure on land that is home to rare flora and fauna during the same period, the documents show.
Bloomberg noted that in its 2006 environmental impact assessment of the area, Pemex said there were four types of mangrove and 23 species of protected fauna. The state oil company said in the assessment that conserving coastal vegetation “should be considered a priority.”
It pledged that all the mangroves – which are more effective than most trees at capturing carbon and provide protection against flooding – would be in a restricted use zone where it wouldn’t build any new projects or carry out activities beyond maintaining existing installations.
The Dos Bocas refinery under construction in Tabasco, on land that was to have been protected.
When it gave conditional approval to Pemex to develop the oil and gas reserves in 2007, Semarnat said the state company would not be allowed to develop projects or carry out activities in areas with mangroves and several other types of vegetation.
Pemex “must abide by each and every prevention and mitigation measure it proposed in the environmental impact assessment,” the ministry said.
Bloomberg said “satellite mapping coordinates of the area listed in the documents and verified for Bloomberg by Planet Labs Inc., a … provider of satellite imaging services, along with maps, leave no room for ambiguity: the refinery sits inside the protected area.”
The news agency consulted four environmental lawyers who concluded that Pemex’s obligation to preserve the land on which the US $8 billion refinery is being built has probably not been rescinded.
“Pemex is obliged to comply with these conditions throughout the lifetime” of the 20-year project, said Fernanda Velasco, who has worked as a government regulator.
Daniel Basurto, former coordinator of the Mexican Bar Association’s environment committee, told Bloomberg that Pemex’s obligation to preserve the area could theoretically have been superseded by a subsequent agreement or directive but he had no knowledge of any change.
The news agency said that neither Pemex nor Semarnat responded to requests for comment, and the office of President López Obrador declined to comment.
López Obrador, a Tabasco native, says that construction of the refinery and rehabilitation of Pemex’s six existing refineries will allow Mexico to reach self-sufficiency for gasoline by 2023. He is determined to “rescue” the state oil company from what he describes as decades of neglect and has sought to enact policies that give it and the state-owned electricity utility a more prominent place in the Mexican energy market.
The Dos Bocas project has created many jobs but residents of Paraíso, the coastal municipality where it is located, nevertheless rejected the ruling Morena party at elections on June 6. The Democratic Revolution Party, López Obrador’s previous political home, seized the mayoralty from Morena, which won office in Paraíso in 2018.
The new refinery, which is expected to process 340,000 barrels of crude per day, was originally scheduled to begin operations in 2022 but Pemex now forecasts a 2023 opening date. The price could blow out to more than US $10 billion, recent projections suggest.
Guadalajara residents have signaled their approval for the state’s public transportation system for the first time.
A survey gave transportation infrastructure a score of 7.5 compared to the 5.6 it was given in 2018. The survey asked 2,500 of an estimated 1.5 million users to give their opinions.
The transport system includes bus services, a three-line metro and a transit-way with bus-only lanes in the greater metropolitan area.
Respondents were asked to rate seven features: lighting, comfort, safety, customer attention, accessibility, infrastructure and general quality and universal accessibility.
The director of transport planning in Guadalajara, Mario Silva, highlighted some of the highest scoring features. “We can see that personal security has a rating of 7.9, attention of the driver to the user has 8.1. This could be the effect of … training strategies,” he said.
Lighting was given a score of 8.1, general accessibility 7.8, and comfort 7.7.
Universal accessibility, to allow ease of access to disabled and senior travelers, scored lowest, although none of the scores was below the threshold for approval. Within the universal accessibility category, priority seats were given a score of 8; stairways and buzzers 7.8; wheelchair holds 6.8; and lowered seating a rating of 6.6.
The survey also revealed that 18.2% of respondents had been victims of some form of sexual harassment. The majority of public transport users are women at 55.7%.
Jalisco Governor Enrique Alfaro said he expects public satisfaction to increase. “The survey was done even before the new buses arrived; we are sure that the evaluation we do next year will show an improvement. For the first time we have a positive approval rating,” he said.
In May, 38 new 100% electric buses arrived in Guadalajara from Shanghai, China. The buses have a 58-person capacity and accessibility features such as ramps and spaces for wheelchairs.
The vaccination certificate issued by the federal government.
Authorities in at least two states have announced that people will be required to show proof of vaccination against Covid-19 or a negative test result to enter public places such as restaurants, bars and shopping centers.
Mazatlán Mayor Luis Guillermo Benítez Torres said citizens must carry their vaccination certificates with them when they are in all public places, while Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquín said people won’t be permitted to enter such places unless they can prove they have been vaccinated or recently tested negative to Covid-19.
Benítez said the rule will take effect in the Sinaloa resort city on Saturday, a day after the vaccination campaign to inoculate people aged 18 to 29 with a first dose of the Sinovac vaccine concludes.
“To stop this pandemic in its tracks, … starting Saturday we’re going to demand that all citizens carry their vaccination certificate against Covid in order to go to any public place,” he said, adding that the aim of the measure is to encourage people to get vaccinated.
“A lot of people are not wanting to … get vaccinated and they are partly responsible for this [pandemic] continuing; it’s proven that the vaccine works,” the mayor said.
Sinaloa is currently the only maximum risk red light state in Mexico and Mazatlán ranks third among its 18 municipalities for active cases with more than 500. Only the state capital Culiacán and Ahome in the northwest have more.
Benítez said people aged over 30 who didn’t get vaccinated when shots were offered to their age group will have another opportunity to do so. He also reminded Mazatlán residents that the use of face masks is compulsory in public places.
In Quintana Roo, Governor Joaquín said Saturday that businesses must make proof of vaccination or a negative result from a Covid-19 test performed in the past 72 hours a condition of entry. The same rule – which took effect Monday – applies to staff, he said.
A worker at the Las Tiendas shopping mall in downtown Cancún said Sunday that the rule hadn’t yet been enforced but would be.
“I couldn’t tell you from when but those who are not vaccinated won’t be able to come in,” a woman identified only as Ruby told the news website Por Esto!
“We predict our sales will decline between 50% and 80%,” she said.
Mazatlán Mayor Benítez: the purpose of the measure is measure is to encourage people to get vaccinated.
Jesús Ayala, who owns a business in the mall, acknowledged that the rule will have to be enforced because it’s a state government order. Sales will fall but “health comes first,” he said.
A security guard at the same mall told Por Esto! that the proof of vaccination/negative test requirement for entry would take effect by Tuesday at the latest. He also said that a rapid testing station with the capacity to perform 200 tests per day would be set up outside the shopping center.
Quintana Roo, currently high risk orange on the stoplight map, is one of several states that have seen a recent increase in case numbers as the highly contagious Delta strain of the coronavirus takes hold in Mexico.
Joaquín also reminded businesses that they must adhere to 50% capacity limits and restaurants and bars must close by 12:00 a.m. while the orange light risk level remains in effect in the Caribbean coast state. Any establishments flouting the rules will be sanctioned, he said.
“The objective is to save lives and achieve a balance with the recovery of economic activities,” the governor said.
Meanwhile, the number of active coronavirus cases across Mexico remains above 100,000, according to Health Ministry estimates, a level on par with the number of active infections at the peak of the second and worst wave of the pandemic at the start of 2021.
The Health Ministry reported 5,920 new cases on Monday and 171 additional Covid-19 deaths, lifting the accumulated totals to 2.75 million infections and 238,595 test-confirmed fatalities.
An average of 9,045 new cases per day were reported in the first 26 days of July, a 157% increase compared to the daily average in June. This month’s average daily reported death toll – 213 – is 33% lower than the average in June, an indication that vaccination is saving lives.
Almost 60.9 million vaccine doses have been administered in Mexico since the first shot was given on December 24 and 47% of the adult population has received at least one dose, the Health Ministry said Monday. However, some states have much lower coverage rates.
To address that situation, President López Obrador announced Monday that vaccination would be ramped up in the five states with the lowest rates: Veracruz, Puebla, Guerrero, Chiapas and Oaxaca.
A foundation created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, fresh off a flight to the edge of space, has agreed to finance the restoration of mangroves in Nayarit, Yucatán and Quintana Roo.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) announced the donation on Monday from the Bezos Earth Fund, without specifying the amount. Bezos is the world’s richest person with a net worth of US $177 billion, according to Forbes.
The areas which will benefit from the donation are the National Marshes of Nayarit Biosphere Reserve, the Rio Lagartos Biosphere Reserve and the Dzilam State Reserve in Yucatán, and the Yum Balam Flora and Fauna Protection Area in Quintana Roo.
Damage has been done to protected areas in recent years due to tourism and other development in what civic associations have termed “ecocides.” A report published Tuesday by Bloomberg showed that the Dos Bocas oil refinery in Tabasco is being build in an area that is home to four types of mangrove, which state oil firm Pemex had previously promised to protect.
The WWF said that mangroves are of vital importance to protect coastal communities as natural flood control systems and hurricane barriers, and also act as natural habitats for fish and crustaceans. The organization has promised to work with local communities over the next five years to “reduce vulnerabilities to climate change.”
The managing director of WWF Mexico, Jorge Rickards, voiced his appreciation for the donation. “WWF is deeply grateful for this transformative investment and for the impact this commitment will have on millions of people around the world,” he said in a statement.
Karen Douthwaite of WWF USA explained how the NGO would collate knowledge for the project. “WWF will work closely with communities and experts … to integrate their information with data from space satellites. This knowledge gathering will help us implement restoration and protection strategies,” she said.
Mangroves cover more than 905,000 hectares of coastline, according to data from the National Biodiversity Commission (Conabio), accounting for 6% of the world’s total mangroves. That makes Mexico the country with the fourth largest area of mangroves, behind only Indonesia, Australia and Brazil, according to Conabio.
Last Tuesday, returning from his trip to space, Bezos said the experience made him realize how fragile the Earth’s atmosphere is. “The atmosphere is so giant, but when you’re above it, what you see is that it’s really very thin. It’s a small, fragile thing and as we move around the planet, we’re damaging it,” he said.
One of several banners that appeared Monday in the northern border state.
Feuding factions of the Tamaulipas-based Gulf Cartel have announced they have reached a truce and want the northern border state to live in peace.
The Grupo Scorpion, Grupo Metros and Tampico Grupo Rojo factions made the announcement on professionally printed narco-banners that appeared in public places on Monday in several Tamaulipas cities including Reynosa, Tampico, Matamoros, Río Bravo and Padilla.
The groups have been fighting each other for the past decade in a turf war that has fueled high levels of violence in Tamaulipas. But they reached a ceasefire agreement on July 19, according to their banners.
“We have agreed to a truce of tranquility and we declare our solidarity with the people, and with ideological principles consistent with keeping the peace,” one banner said.
“We also have family. … The primordial thing is for the communities in which we have a presence to feel secure with it, without any worry. … The Gulf Cartel has principles and its highest priority is the tranquility of the state and the wellbeing of the towns. … Long live peace in Tamaulipas.”
The narco-banners carried a message of peace: ‘We have agreed to a truce of tranquility and we declare our solidarity with the people.’
State police said that four people were arrested on suspicion of hanging the banners from buildings and overpasses.
The name of a fourth faction of the Gulf Cartel – Los Ciclones (The Cyclones) – didn’t appear on the banners but given that they were hung in Matamoros, where the group is based, it is likely that it is also party to the truce.
The Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office has said that a spate of indiscriminate attacks in Reynosa last month that left 19 people dead were perpetrated by members of the Cyclones and the Scorpions, which is also based in Matamoros.
Prosecutors said the aim of the two factions was to terrorize residents of Reynosa as part of a strategy to challenge the Metros’ long-held sway in the city, located across the border from McAllen, Texas.
Twenty-five people have been arrested in connection with the June 19 rampage in which innocent bystanders including taxi drivers, construction workers, children and a nursing student were killed. Among those detained is Jorge Iván Cárdenas Martínez, a presumed Gulf Cartel plaza chief in Río Bravo.
Splinter groups of the Zetas drug cartel have also been involved in turf wars in recent years in Tamaulipas, a state notorious for violent crime. The state has a 370-kilometer-long border with Texas, making it a lucrative hotspot for the smuggling of drugs and migrants.
Colorful costumes adorned the capital's zócalo on Monday.
Around 2,000 dancers, musicians, singers and artists joined the annual celebration on Monday of the foundation of Tenochtitlán, the forebear to Mexico City and the capital of the Mexica people, also known as the Aztecs.
The precise date of the historic city’s foundation is debated. Most archaeologists and academics point to 1325, arguing that records indicate the pre-Hispanic year of “2-Calli,” which would make this year the 696th anniversary. However, to their ire, the government has promoted the events this year to mark “Seven Centuries of History,” which places the date at 1321 or 700 years ago.
The numeric symmetry must have been hard to resist for government planners: 2021 marks 200 years since Mexican independence and 500 years since Hernán Cortés’ victory at Tenochtitlán; 15 events are planned this year to celebrate.
However, commemorating the city’s foundation is a well established tradition. Since 1975, groups have converged on the zócalo each year on July 26 to celebrate the arrival of the first settlers.
One participant, Tonawaka Kwauhtlinxan, saw the event as an opportunity for connection. “We are celebrating this great event. It is the time of unification, the time to come back together as one great tribe. We are one tribe, the human tribe,” he said.
A dancer celebrates the founding of the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlán.
At 1:43 p.m. participants paused for the “zenith passage” when the sun reached its highest point in the day.
David Trejo, who arranged a tlalmanalli altar to marks the four elements and the deities, explained the astronomical phenomenon. “We have paused the dance to explain the astronomical pattern that is observed when the shadow disappears … the shadow of the flag [in the center of the zócalo], disappears,” he said.
Trejo added that the commemoration should be inclusive. “All Mexicans should know their roots, their culture, and be proud to be Mexicans. We always talk about September 16 [Independence Day] but there are other dates … that we continue to talk about after 500 years of the arrival of the Spaniards. Mexico is a multicultural world,” he said.
Amid offerings, dances and the “zenith passage,” there was a game of ulama, a Mesoamerican ball game.
Trejo, for one, said he was pleased with the government’s efforts to celebrate pre-Hispanic history. “We have had a lot of openness with the local government and other states. They are supporting us and promoting the rescue of the culture,” he said.
