The existing model criticized for not having been conducive to high academic achievement.
The federal government’s new curriculum model will be implemented in 960 public schools in a pilot program that will commence on October 29.
Education officials said Tuesday that the new model has provisions for teacher training and gives teachers the opportunity to co-design education programs. They also said that it allows for the development of national education strategies and will entail an “administrative transformation” of the education sector.
The new model was developed over a period of 18 months in consultation with a range of stakeholders including teachers, students, parents, indigenous people and civil society organizations. It will eventually be implemented in all preschools, primary schools and secondary schools across Mexico. The pilot program will run in 30 schools in each of the 32 federal entities.
Presenting the new education model alongside other officials, Education Minister Delfina Gómez said it was carefully designed to ensure that it brings real and lasting change to the nation’s schools. The model promotes democracy, respect for legality, self-determination and the exercising of one’s political and social rights, said Gómez, who will soon step down as education minister to contest the 2023 México state gubernatorial election as the candidate for the ruling Morena party.
According to the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), education reforms enacted by previous governments over the past 30 years fostered inequality, racism and classism. In a document outlining the new education plan, the ministry said the existing model has caused many students to leave school early and hasn’t been conducive to high academic achievement.
SEP described it as “patriarchal, colonial, scientific, Eurocentric, homophobic and racist.”
It has imposed a “hegemonic model of citizenship,” which is contrary to “a healthy life and the democratic sense,” it said.
According to SEP, Mexican schools must reclaim their roles as institutions that educate citizens to “live and co-exist in a democratic society.”
Under the new curriculum model, teachers will have “professional autonomy … to decide … their didactic exercise,” the ministry said. Schools will become “spaces where students learn values, knowledge and skills in a critical, active and supportive way.”
In summary, reported the Reforma newspaper, the new education model is characterized by its promotion of a community rather than global outlook, its elimination of concepts considered to be neoliberal (a dirty word, according to President López Obrador) and its support for teachers’ educational autonomy.
Arriaga said earlier this year that the new curriculum model will place much greater emphasis on sharing and the common good than pitting individual students against each other. The model will be “libertarian” and “humanist” and put an end to racism in the education system and “standardized tests that segregate society,” he said in late April.
The remains of a Canadian man were found in a vacation rental north of Puerto Vallarta alongside his 5-year-old son who was crying and in shock while lying next to his father’s decomposing body. The body was found in the Vilanova subdivision in Jarretaderas, Nayarit.
The man, 44-year-old John Poulson, was found by his neighbor, also Canadian, who was contacted by Poulson’s ex-wife when she couldn’t get in touch with him by telephone from her home in Canada. According to reports, Poulson hadn’t been seen since August 7.
A terrible smell greeted the neighbor who went to the home to inquire. Inside, he found the air conditioning running, the lights off and Poulson’s body in his bedroom, his young son lying beside him.
Authorities said the body was in an advanced state of decomposition. Officials have not announced an official cause of death. The boy is now in the care of the neighbor while authorities await his mother who was traveling to Mexico from Canada to collect him.
Strengthening the rule of law and ending impunity is crucial to combatting violence in Mexico, according to a senior official with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
In an interview with the El Universal newspaper, the research and advocacy organization’s vice president for programs, Maureen Meyer, said militarized security strategies have failed and that the current government needs to rethink its non-confrontational “hugs, not bullets” approach to combatting violence.
The question that needs to be asked, she said, is: “What changes can [President] López Obrador implement [to improve] security and strengthen the rule of law?”
Meyer – who lived in Mexico between 2001 and 2020 and led WOLA’s Mexico program for 14 years – told El Universal that one of the reasons why there is so much violence here is impunity, which has remained stubbornly high despite the government’s commitment to eradicating it.
“You can kill someone with impunity because there are no consequences,” she said, adding that public security efforts have to be accompanied by the investigation and prosecution of criminals.
Asked whether the militarization of public security was the right way to respond to the security crisis – López Obrador announced last week that he would issue a decree to transfer responsibility for the National Guard from the civilian Security Ministry to the army – Meyer said evidence showed it wasn’t.
Studies show that the use of the military to carry out public security tasks “hasn’t worked,” she said, noting that “violence hasn’t declined.”
Former presidents Felipe Calderón and Enrique Peña Nieto both used the military for public security tasks, as has López Obrador, although the current president asserts that his strategy is different because he instructs the armed forces to avoid confrontations with criminal groups wherever possible.
Meyer reiterated that militarization “hasn’t been effective in attending to security problems in Mexico.”
Instead, it has generated “more concerns,” she said. “Police and the military are not interchangeable. They have different training, different roles and there are a lot of risks at a human rights level.”
Indeed, members of the armed forces have been accused of committing human rights abuses while carrying out public security tasks across the country. In a report published earlier this year, Human Rights Watch noted that the National Human Rights Commission received 3,799 complaints of military abuses between 2013 and 2020. Extrajudicial killings are among the alleged abuses.
Meyer asserted that López Obrador is on the “wrong track” with his plan to put the National Guard under army control, highlighting that the proposal goes against the constitution, which was modified to create the security force under civilian leadership.
As for the “hugs, not bullets” approach, not confronting criminal groups “hasn’t been an effective strategy either,” she said.
The strategy – a kind of militarization-lite approach – needs to be rethought, the WOLA VP said.
On the one hand, the government needs to decide what the role of the military is when it comes into contact with organized crime, Meyer said.
On the other hand, Meyer said, the government needs to work out how to strengthen civilian police forces, including state and municipal ones. Mexican police – especially members of municipal forces – are generally paid poorly and lack training. Many haven’t passed confidence tests, and numerous police forces have been disarmed due to suspected collusion with criminal groups.
Federal authorities need to think about how to achieve “better coordination between the three levels of government to confront the security crisis … we’re currently seeing in [northern] border cities and Guanajuato,” Meyer said, referring to recent outbreaks of violence in Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana and several Guanajuato municipalities. .
She also said the government’s security strategy has not clearly defined the role of prosecutor’s offices in the fight against violence, which remains at extremely high if not record levels.
“Since Calderón launched his [militarized] war against drug trafficking [in 2006], … what has really been lacking is [direction about] how to continue implementing the justice system and strengthen the rule of law in Mexico,” Meyer said.
She also noted that a recent survey conducted by the national statistics agency INEGI showed that the perception of insecurity among citizens is on the rise.
“There’s a generalized perception of insecurity in Mexico that is concerning and which shows that there is a need to rethink the federal government’s current security strategy,” Meyer said.
Despite that, the entire country isn’t plagued by violence, she stressed, noting that the latest statistics show that violence remains concentrated in certain states and municipalities.
The activists come from multiple towns in the Valley of Mexico, listed on the sign seen here.
Indigenous communities from the Cholula Valley region and the communities near Mexico’s two most famous volcanoes — Iztaccihuatl and Popocatépetl — are demanding that the multinational water company Bonafont leave their land immediately.
The latest salvo in a longstanding debate about who has rights to water — international companies or local communities — was fired by a group called Pueblos Unidos of the Cholulteca Region, which has put out a call to the international community on the activist platform SumofUs.org, asking it to help them remove a Bonafont plant from the area where they live.
The group cites environmental damages that they say are due to the company’s presence there, including contaminated water.
The Bonafont brand belongs to the French company Danone, also known as Dannon in the United States. The Bonafont brand is sold in Mexico and Brazil.
“The water belongs to the people,” says this mural near the Bonafont plant in Puebla. Tamara Pearson/Green Left
Community protesters took over a Bonafont water plant at the beginning of this month, hosting a press conference where they displayed samples of dirty water from the area’s rivers. They also blamed Bonafont for illnesses in the communities and for the drying up of the area’s wells.
Although the company was forced to stop extracting water from the area in March 2021, Pueblos Unidos wants the Bonafont plant removed from the area, saying it represents for them “the company’s plunder from other territories that they are now storing in the Cholulteca region,” which they say they cannot permit.
The train will link the Buenavista station with AIFA.
Expanding a train line that will take people from downtown Mexico City to the new Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA) will cost twice what was originally planned, the newspaper El Universal reported Tuesday.
The paper obtained what it called classified information revealing the cost of the suburban train project has increased from 12.48 billion pesos (US $626.7 million) to 25 billion pesos (US $1.26 billion).
The cost projections were updated on June 1 by the Ministry of Infrastructure, Communications and Transportation (SICT), El Universal reported.
The expansion of the suburban train line that currently runs northward from the Buenavista station in central Mexico City to the Cuautitlán station in México state will include six new stations and a terminal at AIFA, which opened in March after being built by the army.
The new tracks, which will come off the Lechería station, will allow travelers to reach the new airport from the center of the capital in 45 minutes, a fact that a train-riding President López Obrador proudly proclaimed in a video posted to social media in December. Such a trip will cover approximately 50 kilometers, and El Universal reports it will take just 39 minutes.
According to a report in Mexico Business News, only 14% of the expansion works were complete when AIFA opened on March 21 on the site of the Santa Lucía military base in Zumpango, state of México. That report added that the new train line isn’t expected to go into operation until approximately September 2023. (El Universal’s reporting on Tuesday did not provide a projected opening day.)
The train line is expected to carry a lot of passengers to the new airport, since driving there can be a headache, with early reports of journeys from 90 minutes to 2½ hours from central Mexico City. In April, Mexico News Daily’s Lydia Carey wrote about her travails of getting to AIFA from the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City, writing “several signs pointed us in one direction, yet GPS took us in another” in one area and “signage was nil” in another. The trip ended up taking 1 hour and 45 minutes.
As for the rail line extension, El Universal noted that if the total cost of the work is considered — including operation and maintenance costs — then the cost of the project skyrockets to 35.6 billion pesos (US $1.8 billion), which is 2.8 times more than initially planned.
Part of the reason for the increase was “due to the use of two parallel tracks, instead of one,” according to a letter from a Ferrocarriles Suburbanos’ representative to the SICT, according to El Universal. Ferrocarriles Suburbanos is the concessionaire of the current Buenavista-Cuautitlán line.
The project will connect the Lechería station to AIFA through a length of 23 kilometers of double electrified track, three elevated viaducts, nine vehicular crossings, two railway bridges over the Grand Canal, 10 pedestrian crossings and four intermediate stations (plus two more in a second stage). Seven contracts have been awarded to do the work.
Students take cover on the floor during mock gunbattle in a Fresnillo school.
Kids attending summer school in Zacatecas are learning math, Spanish, drawing and … how to dodge bullets.
Primary school-aged children attending the “My Vacation in the Library” program in the city of Fresnillo recently put their books and pencils down to learn what to do should they find themselves caught in the crossfire of a gunbattle. Municipal police officers taught the class, which included a simulated shootout during which the kids put their newfound knowledge to use.
A video posted to social media shows kids dropping to the floor and lying on their chests as fake gunshots ring out. Summer school teachers assist the students while the police officers watch and offer advice. The teachers sing during the drill, apparently to calm the students down.
There was a mixed reaction to the bullet-dodging tutorial on social media, with some internet users criticizing the course and others saying that sadly such instruction is needed.
En Fresnillo, enseñan a niños en curso de verano a cómo actuar ante una balacera. pic.twitter.com/hybCOGpy0K
“It shouldn’t be [necessary] but under the circumstances in which we live in Mexico, it might be a good thing to know what to do in a similar situation,” one Twitter user said. “I’m speechless. How terrifying! But it’s our Mexican reality,” said another.
A statistic reported by the El Universal newspaper provides support for those who believe there is a need to teach kids what to do if they find themselves in a place where bullets are whizzing through the air: four boys and girls have been killed in crossfire in Fresnillo this year.
In addition to participating in the shootout drill, the summer school attendees took part in an activity in which they pretended they were police or forensic experts inspecting a crime scene. They collected mock evidence and cordoned off an area where a hypothetical abduction occurred, according to a report by the Infobae news website. Through the role-play, students learned ways in which they can help prevent the crime of kidnapping.
Located 60 kilometers north of Zacatecas city, Fresnillo has been plagued by violent crime in recent years. Mayor Saúl Monreal said last year that “the municipality has been overtaken” by organized crime activity.
“The municipality does not have much capacity [to deal with crime]. I have said so a thousand and one times,” he said in January 2021.
According to a recent public security survey, two-thirds of adult residents of Fresnillo feel unsafe in their city.
Mennonites from other Mexican states and from Paraguay, Bolivia and Canada attended the celebration just outside Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. Photos from Facebook
One of Mexico’s oft-forgotten groups, the Mennonites, closed celebrations for the 100th anniversary of their settling in Mexico on Sunday.
Thousands attended the festivities, which began last Wednesday outside Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. The state is home to some 90% of the Mennonite community in Mexico. There are also smaller groups in Durango, Campeche, Tamaulipas, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Quintana Roo.
Events at the celebration included history lectures, a parade, theater, music, a rodeo and business expos.
Mennonites from other Mexican states and from Paraguay, Bolivia and Canada attended, as did representatives from the consulates of Canada, the U.S. and Germany. “Today more than ever we are proud to be Mennonites and proud to be Mexicans,” the master of ceremonies said.
The five days of festivities included many activities: talks about Mennonite history, concerts and a rodeo among them.
Cuauhtémoc Mayor Elías Humberto Pérez Mendoza told attendees that, over a century, the city had successfully combined three cultures: Mennonite, mestiza (mixed European and indigenous ancestry) and indigenous Rarámuri.
The Anabaptist Christian group originally from Europe was previously based in Canada before a nationalistic climate in their adopted home pushed them to leave the country and settle in Mexico at the beginning of the 2oth century.
The religious sect acquired a 100,000-hectare land grant in Chihuahua from the government of Álvaro Obregón, and in 1922, Mennonite families first arrived by train in their thousands.
Historian Peter Rempel said the Mennonites’ departure from Canada was spurred by anti-German sentiment at the time, which led to discrimination against the ethnically Germanic group. Military conscription in Canada for the First World War also conflicted with their philosophy of pacifism.
Mennonites in Mexico still speak a form of German as well as Spanish and English.
Life today in Mexico’s Mennonite communities remains largely conservative, but the use of automobiles has become the norm and Spanish and English are spoken alongside Plautdietsch, an old Germanic language.
Mexicans outside of Chihuahua will also be able to honor the Mennonites’ anniversary: the Bank of México has created a commemorative 20-peso coin bearing the image of a Mennonite family in traditional dress.
Soldiers arrive at the mine site August 3 to assist with the rescue.
The federal government will ask two foreign companies for advice about how to go about rescuing 10 miners who have been trapped in a flooded coal mine in Coahuila since August 3.
National Civil Protection chief Laura Velázquez said Tuesday that the government will seek help from a German firm and another in the United States, neither of which she named.
“We’ll speak with them today to find out who can give us the best opinion, … taking the conditions of this mine into account. They’re two companies that will give us an opinion to determine the most precise [rescue] actions,” Velázquez told President López Obrador’s morning news conference.
The Civil Protection chief noted that the request for international help came from the families of the trapped miners, who are camped out at the flooded El Pinabete mine in the municipality of Sabinas.
“We’re attending to their basic needs so that their stay at the mine and their wait are a little calmer,” Velázquez added.
The 10 miners became trapped when the mine flooded after excavation work caused a tunnel wall to collapse 13 days ago. Authorities have used pumps to extract water, but levels in three wells rose suddenly on Sunday as water from an abandoned adjacent mine called Las Conchas apparently leaked – or gushed – into the El Pinabete mine.
The abrupt increase in the water levels hampered rescue efforts, which authorities say require low levels to proceed safely. Heavy rain fell at the mine site on Monday, further complicating the rescue work.
The El Pinabete mine is just 400 meters from the Sabinas River in an area of subterranean springs. With the rainy season underway, there is a risk that more water will enter the mine via the water table, the newspaper Reforma reported.
Velázquez announced Monday that concrete will be injected into the mine to seal off inundated wells from the adjacent mine and thus prevent more water flowing into El Pinabete, but that work hasn’t yet begun. The official said she will provide additional information about the plan on Wednesday.
For his part, López Obrador called on the federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to investigate a concession granted for the mine during the 2000-2006 government led by former president Vicente Fox.
“The concession for this mine was issued by Fox and … in a strict sense, the concession shouldn’t have been granted. How can a concession be granted next to a flooded, canceled mine? The FGR has to do an investigation about this regrettable incident,” he said.
The president highlighted that his administration hasn’t granted a single mining concession since it took office in late 2018. Past “neoliberal governments,” in contrast, issued permits for mines totaling 120 million hectares, he said.
It is a claim the president has made several times but the figures don’t match with those of the Ministry of Economy, which says mining concessions cover 16.84 million hectares of Mexico’s territory.
Competitor and trainer Claudia Ivet Becerril Aragon teaches a young woman a maneuver for competition. Becerril has been in the sport for 28 years. Photos by Joseph Sorrentino
Under the watchful eye of their trainer, four pairs of young women on horseback circle a small arena in Chipilo, Puebla, keeping alive a Mexican tradition that dates back to the Spanish colonial era.
When their captain, Fernanda Berra, calls out “uno,” they turn their horses toward the center of the arena and smoothly for a circle before breaking off again in pairs to perform the maneuver yet again.
In fact, they’ll perform this maneuver and several others again and again until they’re perfect — in hopes of someday taking part in an escaramuza charra, a traditional Mexican equestrian event for women.
The goal with this team, and with all teams, is to enter competitions. They’ll start with local ones, hoping to advance to state and, eventually, the national competitions, which are held in late October or early November.
Escaramuza charra riders practicing a coordinated abanico riding maneuver in Chipilo, Puebla. Males perform singly, but females do maneuvers in a team of eight.
“The name escaramuza (skirmish) comes from the Mexican army,” said Claudia Ivet Becerril Aragon, who has performed in escaramuza charra for 28 years and worked as a trainer for 10. “[These soldiers] were mounted on horses and were in the lead. They were in front of everything.”
The tradition came out of charrería — traditional Mexican rodeo — which has its roots in rural Mexico where haciendas had large herds of cattle. Part of the tradition involved competitions between haciendas that showcased a cattleman’s ability to rope and ride.
After the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920, the nation’s haciendas were broken up. Many owners, as well as the workers on these estates, moved to cities where they continued to ride and often met in informal competitions.
These competitions and the sport became formalized in 1921 with the formation of the National Charro Association. And in 1933, charrería was declared Mexico’s national sport. It’s also on UNESCO’s world list of intangible cultural heritage.
Charrería opened up to women sometime in the 1950s. While men perform individually, women perform in teams of eight.
The women wear colorful ruffled dresses and sombreros during competitions, a costume that honors the Adelitas, women who fought in the Mexican Revolution. The teams of women ride sidesaddle while performing intricate movements to traditional music. They do maneuvers that involve crosses and turns and forming circles.
“It takes two years for a team to be ready to compete and to perform decently at the lowest level of competition,” said Becerril, “and four years to be ready to compete at the national level.”
When Becerril wants the women to learn a new movement, she calls them to the center of the corral, called a lienzo, gesturing as she explains. For the cross maneuver, the women ride from opposite sides of the lienzo and weave their way past each other.
It all seems incredibly complicated to an outsider, but she somehow gets her point across and the women trot away as Becerril continues to call out instructions and encouragement.
Escaramuza charra is not an inexpensive sport. The women all wear the distinctive, large sombrero traditional to the sport that was originally made of straw but that these days, is often made of rabbit skin and embroidered with intricate designs. These can cost as much as US $2,000.
Then there are the beautiful dresses the women wear, costing between US $150 to US $250. Buying a horse runs anywhere from US $1,750 to US $7,500, and the animal’s food and maintenance can cost as much as US $3,000 a year.
It’s a beautiful and expensive sport. It’s also dangerous.
The sport is often a family affair, with mothers and daughters pursuing it while fathers and brothers do the male version of the sport.
“There are many risks,” said Becerril. “It is considered an extreme sport. A person can fall, there are crashes at high speed. There can be fractures and even deaths. It is always dangerous to mount a horse; it is an animal.”
But, she added, “At the moment of the presentation, there is adrenaline. It makes one feel alive. One feels connected with the horse. It is a link. I think that contact with a horse makes one happy.”
“It is my passion,” explained 15-year-old Renata Mora López. “I love horses. It is a little dangerous, but I have no fear. None. It is like I have practiced all my life.”
Sixteen-year-old Emma Elizabeth Cilia García, who’s been participating for seven months, says it’s not only fancier than other sports, “there is more adrenaline, and it requires more discipline.”
Practices can sometimes last as long as four hours. “It is pretty rough sometimes,” she admits, “but it is worth it.”
For many of the women, including Becerril, escaramuza charra is a family affair, with mothers, aunts and nieces participating. Often, their fathers and uncles are participating in the male version.
Becerril says that after working together for hours over months and years, the women also form a close-knit unit, what she calls a charra family.
But, she acknowledges, that doesn’t always happen right away. It can be a challenge to keep the younger women involved long-term. She maintains an upbeat and patient demeanor during rehearsals, smiling and laughing often, but she admits to feeling frustrated at times.
“It is difficult to keep a team together because girls leave,” she said. “We will get to one point, learn the exercise and then someone says, ‘I am going to leave.’ You get to one point, and then you have to go back to the step before. It is a lot of work.”
At one recent practice, two new girls were having difficulty learning the maneuvers. “You see how it is with new girls?” she said. “We advance, and then we go back.”
Despite the challenges and frustrations, Becerril said she will continue to teach, and not just because she personally loves the tradition.
“If we do not continue, the sport will be lost,” she said. “It is very important for the culture of Mexico to continue with these traditions, to continue the traditions that the generations behind us have given us.”
It’s a tradition that she says is authentically Mexican.
“To see someone dressed in charro, you will identify that person as a Mexican,” she said.
Some ranchers in drought-stricken areas are struggling to provide food and water for their livestock.
The secondary effects of drought are set to spread beyond the worst affected areas, hitting grain production in the millions of tonnes, endangering livestock and limiting water supply in urban areas.
Corn production has already fallen this year. From January through July, 13.4 million tonnes of corn, wheat and sorghum grains were produced, 6.6% less than in 2019, according to the Agri-Food and Fisheries Information Service (SIAP).
This year’s drought looks set to make matters worse. The National Water Commission’s (Conagua) drought monitoring report with data to July 31 shows water levels 13.2% lower in annual terms in dams for agricultural use. Seven hundred and seventy municipalities were revealed to be experiencing exceptional drought, 8.1% higher than for the same period last year.
Jorge Luis López of the National Agricultural Council (CNA) said the lack of water could cause ever greater losses in the near future. He said northern Mexico “is the most affected in terms of availability, we lost on the order of 1 million tonnes of grain, but if it doesn’t rain throughout central north Mexico we’re talking about losing 3 to 4 million,” he said.
Drought has caused the loss of a million tonnes of grain so far this year, according to the National Agricultural Council.
“There are significant risks because throughout the center and north of the country, which is the main grain zone, the Conagua drought monitor is at severe levels. We are entering the rainy season, hopefully it will rain, but today there is a significant risk of the grain production cycle being affected,” López said, adding that farmers in Tamaulipas had turned to crops that use less water like sorghum.
However, the head of the National Association of Water and Sanitation Entities (ANEAS), Hugo Rojas, said the agricultural sector uses 76.6% of water in the country, but does so inefficiently. “They would have more water than they could use if they had some saving or efficient water management systems,” he said.
Rojas added that the government was responsible for water management and that a new strategy is long overdue. “We have been commenting on the need for a change of management model for 20 years. We began to see the effects, and for a long time nothing was done, and we hope that with this crisis and especially with those that come in the short term, the necessary measures are taken,” he said.
For the time being, the water crisis is set to spread to the most populated area of the country. Thirteen municipalities in the Valley of México and 16 Mexico City boroughs will have water supplies cut by 2.4% from August 15 due to the lack of rainfall.
In northeast Mexico, cattle are also facing a bleak future. The head of a farmers committee in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mauro Barrera Martínez, said the situation was at a crisis point after 120 days without rain. “The crisis of water that we are experiencing in the northeast is taking on catastrophic tones … the municipality is sending water for human consumption but not for cattle. A large animal drinks 60-70 liters of water a day … we don’t have food for the cattle, we don’t have crops, we don’t have anything,” he said.
