The youth hit the man three times on a sidewalk in Guadalajara.
A group of youths assaulted a senior in Guadalajara for no apparent reason last Thursday and shared a video of the attack on social media.
The video shows one of the youths approach the senior, who is waiting for a bus and doesn’t notice them. The youth struck the senior three times in the head before he fell to the ground.
The attack took place near the Alcalde Market in the city center, and the perpetrators were identified on social media.
Three of the four youths and their parents turned themselves into the state Attorney General’s Office. Two of them were identified as Jesús “N” and Alonso “N” through their social media profiles, but their names have not been officially confirmed, the newspaper Informador reported. The news website Reporte Índigo identified the youth who filmed the attack as Alan “N.”
Governor Enrique Alfaro confirmed that the senior was well and said the attack was the sign of a wider social problem.
Dos de los cuatro adolescentes señalados como probables partícipes en la agresión a golpes a un adulto mayor afuera del mercado Alcalde, ya comparecieron ante las autoridades correspondientes y se encuentran individualizados en torno a lo ocurrido. pic.twitter.com/r6iWDEZDAi
“The youths without conscience or values, who hit an elderly person for simple fun outside the Alcalde Market, are the harsh reality and consequence of when social decay spreads like cancer,” he said.
The General Motors complex in Ramos Arizpe, Coahuila.
General Motors won’t invest in Mexico without laws that support renewable energy, the company’s CEO in Mexico said.
Francisco Garza said that GM and other companies won’t invest here in the short and medium term without a legal and structural framework that supports the production of renewable energy
“General Motors is not going to halt its zero-zero-zero vision,” he said, referring to the company’s commitment to a future in which there are no car crashes, no vehicular emissions and no traffic congestion.
“… If the conditions [companies require] are not on the table I believe Mexico won’t be an investment destination in the short and medium term, and as our investments take between five and seven years … if the conditions are not present, the money that was going to be invested in Mexico will go to the United States, Canada, Brazil, China and Europe, and Mexico will cease to be an important [investment] destination,” Garza told the annual convention of the Mexican Institute of Finance Executives.
His remarks came as the federal government pursues reforms that seek to increase the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission’s share of the electricity market and give power generated at its fossil fuel-powered plants priority over renewable energy on the national grid. The government is also proposing the cancellation of self-supply permits which allow companies to operate on electricity they generate themselves, including that from sources such as wind and solar.
If enacted, the proposals would deal a significant blow to private renewable energy companies that have invested heavily in Mexico since the previous government’s energy reform took effect. They would also affect companies such as GM that want to increase their use of renewable energy.
While President López Obrador champions the continued use of fossil fuels and seeks to wind back the 2013 energy reform, Garza stressed the importance of transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources.
GM has committed to investing US $27 billion between 2020 and 2025 to accelerate its transition to the manufacture of electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles. The company announced in April that it would invest more than $1 billion in Coahuila to open a new paint plant and expand its Ramos Arizpe manufacturing hub so that it can begin making electric vehicles there in 2023.
“There is an important factor that will determine whether the hand brake is put on investment or not,” Garza said, referring to government support for the renewable sector.
GM’s objective is to operate on 100% clean energy by 2040, he added.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the leaders discussed energy – including a constitutional bill that seeks to overhaul electricity market rules – but the issue was not a major discussion point.
A gray whale checks out a new boatload of Whale Magic Tours guests in Mulegé's Ojo de Liebre Lagoon. Photos by Shari Bondy
When she was 20, Canadian Shari Bondy, who worked on various boats in the Pacific, found her watercraft blown out to sea by a storm in the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off the coast of Oaxaca. At some point, she fell unconscious, came to, and found that the vessel was surrounded by whales, who were keeping the boat from flipping over.
She thinks she might have had a near-death experience or something similar because her memories of the event include the whales somehow “talking” to her, telling her that she would be OK and — when she realized she was safe and wanted to somehow thank them — urging her to tell people about them.
She later found out that it was not rare for whales to come to the aid of unlucky humans at sea. So back in Canada, she began studying whale behavior and working on tours that took people to view gray whales on the northern end of their migration route off British Columbia.
But to understand the whales meant to also know the southern end of that migration route — in Baja.
During Bondy’s first visit to Baja California Sur in 1988, she heard about a then-unknown lagoon in Mulegé where whales were so comfortable with humans that they regularly interacted with them, even bringing their babies along. She decided to check it out.
Guest on a Whale Magic tour kissing a whale.
What was supposed to be an hours-long visit to Ojo de Liebre in Mulegé, also known as Scammon’s Lagoon, turned into weeks. It changed her life.
She became pregnant there with her daughter, but that is certainly not the only way the trip profoundly affected her. The experience with the whales in Ojo de Liebre floored her, and she knew she needed to study them.
But finding a way to live here and finance her research wasn’t easy. For some time, she literally lived in a tent on the beach with her daughter and teamed up with local fishermen to give whale sighting tours in English for tips.
She says she was “flying under the radar” since she didn’t know that she needed a permit to do this.
The years went by, and after about a decade, one tour guest happened to ask her what her company’s name was.
She had never thought about it. It was just an informal thing she’d worked out with local fishermen, and most of what she got out of it was the chance take pictures and do other whale research activities.
This guest suggested that she formalize the tour business and asked her, “What is it? What is it that you do?”
Her answer was, “It’s not really what I do; it’s what the whales do. They do this whale magic.”
Hence the name she finally gave her business: Whale Magic Tours.
The tour company is based in that same lagoon that captivated her so many years ago, but today she works with her now grown-up daughter, Sirena. Both are bilingual guides who have lived with and studied the whales for decades.
Unlike other tour operators, they are able to educate visitors from all over the world about whale behavior and biology, the history of the lagoon and stories of the human and whale encounters they have witnessed. Bondy says that gazing into the eye of a whale is a “humbling, life-changing encounter you will never forget.”
At the peak of the whale sighting season here, which runs from January to March, there can be up to 2,000 mothers and babies in the lagoon.
The blowhole, or marine geyser, that gives Bondy’s hotel, La Bufadora, its name. Bufadora is blowhole in Spanish.
So why do the whales approach people?
One reason is that there has been no hunting here in living memory, so the whales feel safe.
The other reason is that the whales here are kind of bored.
While in Baja, they are entirely focused on bearing their young and preparing them for the migration north. They are not even eating. So the gaggles of humans coming out to see them is a kind of entertainment.
They come close and like to be caressed by people’s hands. It is definitely a learned behavior, as it happens nowhere else in the world.
In the 1970s, Mexico began implementing the whale protection measures in the lagoon that are currently in place. The El Vizcaíno Biosphere Reserve was established in Mulegé in 1988.
Mexican authorities asked Bondy to help establish rules for the growing number of humans going out to see the whales in the lagoon.
But Bondy’s involvement in the development of this part of Baja has not ended there. Some years after settling in Mexico, she met and married a fisherman from the little-known town of Bahia Asunción, Mulegé, south of the whale lagoon.
The couple settled into a small house there in 2002 when it had no paved roads, no electricity and no running water. Despite that, they began receiving guests in 2006 and slowly expanded into a bed and breakfast.
It eventually became a hotel called La Bufadora, named for a nearby natural blowhole.
The two businesses keep the Bondy family busy, but Shari still wants to do more for this part of Baja. It attracts a certain kind of tourist, those looking for something off the beaten path or something more laid-back than the popular tourist destinations of Los Cabos and Ensenada.
Despite its growing fame due to the whales, the town of Bahia Asunción is still not terribly developed because even with a paved road, it is an hour from the main highway. “People are too busy to make the detour and check it out,” Bondy says.
Bondy lives in the small town of Bahia Asunción, Mulegé. She also works to promote the tourist economy there.
But it’s worth the trip for the miles of pristine beaches, fishing, boat trips to Asunción Island and, of course, fresh seafood, she adds.
Although the season for tours starts in January, Bondy suggests making arrangements now as spaces fill up quickly, especially with limited space due to COVID-19 rules.
• To book a tour with Whale Magic Tours, you can contact them at [email protected].
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.
Capirotada is named for a hat worn by Inquisition-era Catholic penitents, but it's sinfully delicious.
Some kitchen problems are universal, and what to do with stale bread is one of those.
In Italy, they came up with strata and budi; in England, it’s “the poor man’s pudding.” Spain and Mexico have capirotada.
Whatever you call it, bread pudding is eaten all over the world, albeit with slightly different ingredients.
Traditional Mexican bread pudding is quite different than what I’m used to, though; it includes cheese — aged and sharp cotija, creamy, melty asadero or even a light queso fresco. That’s part of its Moorish heritage.
The word capirotada originates from capirote, the name of a tall conical hat worn by penitents of an extremist Catholic sect during the Inquisition in Spain. (The hat has holes for the eyes and covers the face and allowed the flagellants to remain anonymous. It was later adopted by the American Ku Klux Klan as part of its ominous uniform.)
At any rate, the bread pudding, so named because of its humble main ingredient of stale bread and the symbology representing the body and blood of Christ, was brought across the ocean by Spanish conquistadores.
There are several variations on Mexican capirotada. Blanca (white), is made with more milk and white sugar, and oscura (dark) is sweetened with piloncillo (unrefined brown sugar). Some recipes call for frying the bread first, but most call for stale bread cut into cubes.
Although supposedly Good Friday and during Lent are the traditional times to serve it, I find it more common here in Mazatlán during the cool winter months. While peanuts, almonds and raisins are customary, there’s no reason not to experiment with other dried fruits and nuts.
Stale bread works best; if using fresh, toast it first or let it sit out for a day to dry out somewhat.
Simple Traditional Capirotada
1¼ cups grated piloncillo or packed brown sugar
1¼ cups water
2 (3-inch) cinnamon sticks
4½ cups cubed bolillos or other soft white bread (can be stale)
¼ cup raisins
¼ cup slivered almonds, toasted
¼ cup toasted peanuts, chopped
2 Tbsp. butter, in small pieces
¾ cup cotija or grated Chihuahua cheese
With sweet fruits and salty cheeses, Mexican capirotada has something for everyone.
Combine first three ingredients in saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 10 minutes. Discard cinnamon sticks.
Combine bread, raisins, nuts and butter in a bowl. Drizzle with warm sugar syrup, mixing gently. Spoon mixture into 8-inch square baking dish coated with cooking spray. Top with cheese. Cover with foil; chill 30 minutes or up to 4 hours. Bake at 350 F for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake additional 15 minutes or until cheese is golden brown. Serve warm.
Basic Bread Pudding
If you can find a sweet egg bread like brioche or challah, this pudding will be especially rich. Otherwise, use whatever soft white bread that’s available.
2 cups milk
2 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. vanilla
⅓ cup sugar
Pinch salt
5-6 cups sweet egg bread like challah or brioche, in 2-inch cubes
2 eggs, beaten
In a saucepan over low heat, warm milk, butter, vanilla, sugar and salt. Continue cooking just until butter melts; set aside to cool. Meanwhile, butter a 4- to 6-cup baking dish and fill it with the cubed bread.
Whisk eggs into the cooled milk mixture; pour over bread. Bake at 350 F for 30–45 minutes or until custard is set but still wobbly and the edges of bread have browned. Serve warm or at room temperature.
Tres Leches Bread Pudding
This is baked in a hot water bath like a custard.
Butter for greasing baking dish
3 eggs
4 egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup condensed milk
1 cup whole milk
1 (12-oz.) can evaporated milk
2 tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
About 8 cups brioche or other soft white bread, cut into 1½-inch cubes
Heat the oven to 350 F. Butter 9-inch square baking dish. In large bowl, beat eggs and egg yolks until combined. Whisk in 1 cup heavy cream, ¾ cup condensed milk, the whole milk, evaporated milk, vanilla and salt.
Spread bread in prepared dish; pour egg mixture on top. Press bread down gently with spatula so all pieces are immersed in liquid. Let stand at room temperature 10 minutes.
Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Drizzle 2 Tbsp. condensed milk over the pudding. Cover baking dish tightly with aluminum foil, then set it inside a large roasting pan. Pour boiling water into the roasting pan about halfway up sides of baking dish.
Bake until center of pudding is almost set but still slightly wet, about 25 minutes. Remove foil and bake about 30 minutes more until set in center and top is golden. Carefully remove roasting pan from oven; let pudding cool in the water about 20 minutes. Drizzle with remaining 2 Tbsp. condensed milk. Serve warm, cool or cold.
—nytimes.com
Goat Cheese and Broccoli Bread Pudding
Butter for greasing baking dish
6-8 cups stale baguette, bolillo or other bread, crusts removed
1½ cups milk
2-4 garlic cloves
½ lb. broccoli crowns, cut in small florets
2-3 Tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. fresh thyme or 1 tsp. dried
1 cup (about 4 oz.) goat cheese, crumbled
4 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste
Rub bread slices, front and back, with cut cloves of garlic. Cut bread into cubes. Place in bowl and toss with 1 cup of the milk. Set aside. Butter baking dish.
While there are many sweet versions, bread pudding can also be a savory dish.
In large bowl, beat eggs and goat cheese; add remaining milk. Add salt and pepper, then add the soaked bread and any milk remaining in the bowl. Mix gently. Let sit 15–30 minutes.
Mince any remaining garlic. Steam or microwave broccoli until crisp-tender.
Heat 1 Tbsp. oil over medium heat in skillet. Add garlic, half the thyme, broccoli and a bit of salt and pepper. Stir and cook for 2 minutes, remove from heat and stir into bread mixture.
Scoop bread mixture into baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining thyme, salt and pepper; drizzle on remaining tablespoon of oil. Bake at 350 F for about 50 minutes until puffed, set and lightly browned.
Today’s article will be a song of praise. It has been such a long year and nine months since COVID-19 showed up and ruined all our party plans.
I don’t want to get too excited, of course – I felt elated this summer after receiving my own vaccine, only to see the country gasping for breath (literally, in many cases) in the following weeks under the delta variant.
But now that such a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated (over 80% of adults countrywide, according to official statistics and over 90% of adults in Mexico City), it seems that there’s once again hope that we might get to a point where we can actually relax a bit.
And when I say “relax,” I mean maybe go to an outdoor concert where we can still sit far-ish away from one another and finally send all our kids back to school with their cute little cartoon-decorated masks, widely spaced desks and backpacks chock-full of hand gel.
Heartening, too, is the sight of so many people — at least in my city — still faithfully wearing masks in public. Some people seem to take it extra far, and it’s kind of adorable: I often see drivers wear masks even though they’re alone in their vehicles, and most people walking down the street without another soul in sight are masked up too. But, hey, I’ll take an abundance of caution over a devil-may-care attitude any day!
I’m so happy that people are for the most part not letting up, even in the face of a rosy current picture, rather than behaving like about half the population of my own country.
Reading the news from there has been disheartening to say the least. With the vaccine divide in the United States and in Europe largely causing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” — with a few breakthrough cases turning up as a result of the absence of herd immunity — many countries seem to be facing yet another surge.
While I’ve certainly met people here who have refused the vaccine (and heard about several of their funerals as a result), most people tend to be fairly quiet about their opposition and are usually of the “essential oils will cure all that ails me” type rather than “the government is trying to kill us and make Pfizer rich, and it’s all a conspiracy” variety.
I mean, if this was indeed all planned — and I’m sure that I’ll hear about it from the readers that email me to tell me I’m an idiot every time I write in support of vaccines — all I can say is that they did a terrible job at execution, with just awful fumbles.
Anyway! The combination of vaccines and other efforts at stopping contagion is working, and I’m damn proud. What are we still doing?
Well, all major stores still insist on mask-wearing, using hand gel on your way in and taking patrons’ temperatures.
Taking temperatures seems fairly unnecessary. The result is usually comically low, and at places like the mall, one’s temperature is taken upon entrance to the building and then before entering most stores. How do they think I got in the building? Might I have developed a temperature during my walk from the main entrance to the Liverpool entrance inside the mall?
Once, I walked into a department store the wrong way, and someone chased me down a good 50 meters to make me go back and enter the right way so that I could receive my squirt of gel and get my temperature taken for the sixth time since arriving at the mall 30 minutes earlier.
There’s no need to give anyone a hard time, though. It’s not like those with the thankless job of policing such entrances made the rules. And who knows: maybe it’s prevented a contagion or two.
And, again, what a contrast to my own country, where a sizable portion of the population refuses to wear masks because face coverings are … uncomfortable? Unfashionable? I’ll admit, they can be annoying. But is it really that big a price to pay when we’re trying to free ourselves from this seemingly never-ending pandemic?
In more good news, vaccines have now been opened up to 15 to 17-year-olds in Mexico, in an about-face from the previous government argument that only those young people with existing health conditions would be offered vaccines.
Why the about-face? I have no idea, but I hope it continues down the line until all children are eligible.
With half of parents still too nervous to send their kids to school, it would be a big step in allowing children in Mexico to finally exercise their right to an education, something that minors in literally every other country in the world have been able to do for a while now.
And dare I wish for boosters? It was such an effort to get adults vaccinated that I don’t think we’ve even been discussing it yet, but one can hope.
In the meantime, I’m just so proud to be in a country where so many people are still working hard to take care of themselves and of each other. Time will tell if it pays off, but at least today, I’m optimistic.
President López Obrador at his Wednesday morning press conference.
In 2018, Andrés Manuel López Obrador won the presidency after three tries. His first run was in 2006, when he lost by a sliver to Felipe Calderón of the National Action Party. Calderón had 35.89% of the vote to AMLO’s 35.31%.
AMLO cried foul and demanded a full recount, which he wasn’t granted. On November 20, 2006, the date when the Revolution is commemorated, supporters proclaimed him the legitimate president at a rally in Mexico City’s zócalo.
Since taking office in 2018, Andrés Manuel has derided the National Electoral Institute, and called for its dissolution. However, there are no grudges he often assures through one of his stock phrases: “Revenge isn’t my strength.”
Monday
The budget was approved on Sunday, bringing a smile to the Tabascan, and he thanked legislators for their work, save for those who voted against it.
Those battle lines were dug deeper on the subject of the energy reform: “If [opposition parliamentarians] do not approve the electricity reform, they will end up showing that they do not represent the people … it is not a matter of give and take. Principles and dignity are priceless, and cannot be negotiated,” he affirmed.
Attention turned to migration later in the conference, courtesy of the BBC’s Will Grant, who asked why the budget of the refugee agency COMAR hadn’t been bumped despite an unprecedented rise in asylum claims.
“Well, we help the migrants, we respect them, protect them, take care of them, their rights are not violated,” the president responded.
Tula, Hidalgo, returned to haunt the leader: a journalist suggested that the flooding in September, which killed 16 hospital patients, was not due to excess rainfall. “There are officials with first and last names responsible for this tragedy,” he said.
Did AMLO accept partial responsibility?
“No, no, no. Well, yes, yes, yes, of course, I’m responsible, even though I’m not culpable,” he clarified.
President López Obrador was pleased to see the budget approved on Sunday.
Tuesday
A series of numbers defined Tuesday’s conference: 16, 84%, 15-17, 38 million and 100.
COVID czar and Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell confirmed the third wave was still going in the right direction: it had been on a downward trend for 16 weeks, while 84% of the population was fully vaccinated.
He left the big figures to the boss: 38 million, the president said, was the total of Mexican immigrants living in the United States. He previously called the expatriates “heroes” for their remittance payments, which could reach US $50 billion this year. “Just to give you an idea, the second largest Hispanic community is that of Puerto Rico, and there are five million, and the third … is the Cuban community, four million,” he added.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard offered a rounded number late in the conference: 100, he said, was the number of countries that had committed to or expressed interest in the president’s $1 trillion plan for the world’s poorest, proposed at the UN Security Council meeting in New York on November 9.
Wednesday
The Caribbean sun accompanied Wednesday’s conference in Cancún, Quintana Roo. Governor Carlos Joaquín González said tourism was back in good health, and expressed excitement about the Maya Train which he said would “unite the Maya region.”
While tourism was up, so was violence: Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval announced a new branch of the National Guard to patrol tourist hotspots.
Chief fake news debunker Ana García Vilchis addressed the president’s trip to New York for the UN meeting. Contrary to media reports, the gucci jacket-wearing passenger on the return flight who spoke to the president was not his son, Mexican migrants in New York cheering the president were not paid $100 each, the health budget hadn’t been cut and the energy reform would not create unclean emissions, she confirmed.
AMLO skipped his morning press conference on Thursday and Friday for the North American leaders’ meeting.
Thursday
Mexico bore breakfast without AMLO on Thursday: he was in Washington, D.C., at a conference with U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
López Obrador focused on North America’s shared economic interest, and economic fear: China. “Economic integration … is the best instrument to face the competition from the growth of other regions of the world, in particular, the productive and commercial expansion of China … If the trend of the last decade continues, in 30 years, by 2051, China will have control of 42% of the world market and we, the United States, Mexico and Canada, will have 12%.”
Liberalizing immigration policies, he added, was one way to promote economic growth. “Myths and prejudices must be put to one side. For example, stop rejecting migrants, [because] to grow you need a workforce that, in reality, is not sufficiently available in the United States or Canada. Why not study the demand for labor and open the migratory flow in an orderly fashion?”
Friday
Patience was required of AMLO-ites on Friday, as the morning conference took another day off.
So for the fervently patriotic, or just the intellectually curious, here is Mexico’s rather bloodthirsty, war-like national anthem:
“Mexicans, at the cry of battle lend your swords and bridle; and let the earth tremble at its center upon the roar of the cannon.
“Your forehead shall be girded, oh fatherland, with olive garlands by the divine archangel of peace, For in heaven your eternal destiny has been written by the finger of God.
“But should a foreign enemy, Profane your land with his sole, Think, beloved fatherland, that heaven gave you a soldier in each son.
…
“War, war without truce against who would attempt to blemish the honor of the fatherland! War, war! The patriotic banners saturate in waves of blood.
War, war! On the mount, in the vale The terrifying cannon thunder and the echoes nobly resound to the cries of union! liberty!
…
Fatherland, before your children become unarmed Beneath the yoke their necks in sway, May your countryside be watered with blood, On blood their feet trample.
“And may your temples, palaces and towers crumble in horrid crash, and their ruins exist saying: The fatherland was made of one thousand heroes here.
“Fatherland, fatherland, your children swear to exhale their breath in your cause, If the bugle in its belligerent tone should call upon them to struggle with bravery. “For you the olive garlands! For them a memory of glory! For you a laurel of victory! For them a tomb of honor!”
Playa del Carmen is one of the top trending destinations for U.S. travelers.
A revolution in the way we travel is taking place in countries around the world including Mexico, Airbnb co-founder and chief strategy officer Nate Blecharczyk said Friday during an appearance at a tourism industry event in Mérida, Yucatán.
Speaking at the Tianguis Turístico – Latin America’s largest tourism industry event – Blecharczyk said the coronavirus pandemic has eliminated the need for people to work in specific places at specific times.
Tens of millions of people can now work from anywhere, travel whenever they want and stay away from home for longer, he said.
As a result, many people are living in Airbnb properties, Blecharczyk said, adding that the trend is occurring in Mexico.
“Traveling to Mexico has become a real trend for travelers from the United States. Tulum, Cancún, Mexico City and Playa del Carmen are some of the top trending destinations for U.S. travelers,” Blecharczyk said.
He presented data that showed that villas, cabins and country houses in Mexico were among the most searched listings on the Airbnb site.
The co-founder of the booking platform presented additional global data that showed that 20% of nights booked between July and September were for stays of one month or longer. More than 100,000 guests have stayed continuously on Airbnb for three months or longer during the past year and 45% of nights currently booked on the platform are for stays of one week or longer, up from 38% two years ago.
Six in 10 respondents to an Airbnb survey in Mexico said they were interested in working while traveling so that they can take advantage of their free time to explore and get to know new places, Blecharczyk said.
He also said there are Airbnb hosts in almost all of Mexico’s 132 Pueblos Mágicos, or Magical Towns. Listings in such towns have increased 170% since 2018, Blecharczyk said, adding that as of the end of last year 11,000 families in Pueblos Mágicos had obtained extra income by listing properties on the site.
Earlier this week, President López Obrador inaugurated the 45th edition of the Tianguis Turístico, which was originally slated to be held in Mérida in March 2020 but was postponed due to the pandemic. The event began Tuesday and concludes Friday.
“What in essence this act means is to inaugurate a new stage in the public life of our country, to come out of the tunnel of darkness we were in because of the pandemic,” López Obrador said.
Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco speaks at the Tianguis Turístico.
He lauded the Yucatán Peninsula as a tourism destination, saying it is an “extraordinary region” filled with “archaeological riches.”
“That’s why [we’re building] the Maya Train [railroad], to connect the new and old Mayan cities. In what region of the world are there as many archaeological sites as the Mayan region?” the president said.
The railroad will spur tourists to go beyond the beach and explore, López Obrador said.
For his part, Tourism Minister Miguel Torruco said international tourism declined 46% in Mexico last year compared to a 73% worldwide contraction.
He said López Obrador’s instruction not to restrict the entry of international flights during the pandemic and the implementation of bio-health protocols designed by the Tourism Ministry in close coordination with the Health Ministry allowed Mexico to welcome more international tourists than most other countries. In addition, Mexico has never required incoming travelers to quarantine, present a negative COVID test result or show proof they are vaccinated.
Torruco predicted that international tourist numbers will total 31 million in 2021 and the economic spillover will be US $18.1 billion. It’s estimated that tourism’s contribution to GDP will be 7.1% this year and 8.3% in 2022, he said. The latter figure is almost on a par with 2019 levels.
The tourism minister noted that 490 tourism projects worth a combined US $9.1 billion are currently being built, generating more than 156,000 direct and indirect jobs.
“In addition, in the first half of 2021, Mexico attracted US $711 million in direct foreign tourism investment, and in the second quarter the number of people working in the [tourism] sector was about 4 million – 249,000 more jobs than in the first quarter of the year,” he said.
“… All these statistics are without a doubt encouraging. They show that tourism activity is in the process of recovery,” Torruco said.
With regard to the Tianguis Turístico, the tourism minister said that all 32 Mexican states were represented and that more than 1,500 tourism-sector buyers from 970 companies in 42 countries would be in attendance. Some 95% of all international tourists who come to Mexico are nationals of those 42 countries, Torruco said.
Entrepreneur Matteo Volpi, right, worked with veteran cobbler Don Pepe, left, to make a Mexican-made lightweight backpack a reality. Francesca Volpi
When a hiker decides to spend the night sleeping under the stars, he or she becomes a backpacker and is immediately confronted by a dilemma: how can I get the most comfort at my campsite while carrying the least amount of weight?
Overnighting may require protection from the elements and the preparation of meals. Will you bring a tent? A sleeping pad? A cook stove? What about a water purification kit? An air mattress? A chair? A table? Just how far can you go with this?
A few times in the past, I have opted for so much gear that I was forced to forget about an ordinary knapsack and found myself carrying all my necessities in a huge backpack attached to an aluminum frame, upon which numerous extraneous items were piled or tied, making me look like an itinerant tinker from the days of the horse and buggy.
In the 1960s, it was not uncommon for trekkers to carry from 20 to 30 kilos of gear on their back!
Over the years, the trend has gone in exactly the opposite direction — to ultralight hiking.
Don Pepe supervises a team of senior citizens to construct Volpi backpacks. Francesca Volpi
I first heard about this trend in hiking gear from long-distance hiker Cam Honan, who makes his base here in Mexico but frequently spends months trekking the longest trails in the world.
Honan, an Australian who uses the trail name “Swami,” has walked more than 96,000 kilometers in his lifetime and was named “the most traveled hiker on earth” by Backpacker magazine in 2015.
You may be surprised to learn that Swami typically carries on his back no more than three kilos of equipment, plus food and water.
His secret is simple: he takes full advantage of the wonderfully clever ultralight materials that have replaced leather, canvas, steel and rubber, allowing a modern backpacker to enjoy comfort without paying for it in weight.
Another one of these modern backpackers is 22-year-old Matteo Volpi, who grew up in Guadalajara and started a company, Volpi Outdoor Gear, for making and selling his own high-quality, lightweight hiking backpacks.
“I became interested in hiking and the outdoors when I saw a movie called Into the Wild,” Volpi told me, “which shows — for all of 10 seconds — the protagonist hiking along the Pacific Crest Trail [PCT] that runs through California, Oregon and Washington for over 4,000 kilometers, all the way from Mexico to Canada.”
Entrepreneur Matteo Volpi in Río Seco Canyon inside Guadalajara’s Primavera Forest.
That 10-second glimpse was enough for him, he said.
“I decided then and there that one day I was going to trek along that trail, even though at the time I was just beginning high school,” Volpi said. “So I started working on this project, saving up money. And finally in 2019, I was able to do it.
“I hiked all the way from the Mexican border to Chester, California (the trail’s midpoint), which is a distance of 1,380 kilometers.”
Along the way, Volpi acquired his trail name, “Olive Oil,” a condiment for which he has a great fondness, perhaps inherited from his father, who was born in Italy. “On the PCT, I used olive oil in all my meals,” he explains, laughing. “I even drank it to finish what was left in the bottle before buying more at resupplies!”
It took Volpi 37 days to do his hike, covering 40 to 50 kilometers a day.
“I had a super-light tent made by Tarptent. This is a cottage industry brand from the United States. It weighs around 500 grams, and I prop it up with my hiking poles. I also have a down trekking quilt that serves me as a sleeping bag but weighs very little.”
The Volpi 40-liter backpack is the first example of ultralight gear made in Mexico.
On that trek, he went without a stove, he said.
“I cold-soaked all my meals. For example, if you want to eat couscous, you just put the grain into a plastic jar, add water and throw the jar into your backpack, where it bounces around for half an hour, during which the grain absorbs the water and, voilà, you have a meal! It’s cold but it’s still good. So you don’t need to carry a stove or a gas can, and you need much less water,” he said.
“Other items I ordered from the U.S. were a down jacket, trekking poles, raincoat, rain pants, sleeping pad, a Columbia [brand] shirt and merino wool socks,” Volpi said. “The socks are made by Darn Tough in Vermont and have an unconditional lifetime warranty: a really good product. And [I wore] Altra hiking shoes. They make shoes for trail running, and thanks to them I never had one blister. Almost all my gear comes from small cottage companies.”
Volpi told me that the biggest problem for Mexicans who want to do one of these long-distance trails is getting all that high-quality ultralight gear.
“I had to buy everything from the U.S., but the duties they levy on this kind of specialized equipment are so high that they actually come up to more than the item you’re buying!” he said.
This situation got Volpi thinking about making his own backpacks. “I wanted to do it right here in Mexico, so I worked up a prototype of a frameless ultralight and showed it to a man I know who has spent his whole life making things like knapsacks and shoes, a real expert in stitching. His name is Don Pepe.
Senior citizen Don Pepe has been sewing knapsacks and shoes since age 10.
“Of course, he had never worked with ultralight materials before and maybe had never striven for such high quality, but he immediately knew what I was looking for. So we combined his skills with my knowledge of trekking and ultralight, and Don Pepe soon found himself five or six helpers.
“All of them are older people, by the way. They make a great team and really work together well.”
For months, Volpi and his team of senior citizens plugged away at their backpack, which is made of professional-grade materials made by Ripstop by the Roll, a high-end ultralight fabric supplier in the U.S., popular among small startups and cottage brands.
“Slowly but surely,” says Volpi, “we made our backpack better and better until we ended up with a really high-quality product. And because each one is handmade, you could say they are artesanal, handcrafted. I’m happy to add that we are now selling it both in the U.S. and in France.”
The Volpi 40-liter backpack weighs slightly less than 500 grams (17.6 ounces), light enough to allow you to carry just a little more olive oil!
Perhaps you, like one Volpi customer, will find that “it feels like I have nothing on my back,” and, yes, Volpi’s backpack has passed the greatest test of all:
Volpi, which means “foxes” in Italian, resulted in this logo.
“I through-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail using this pack,” says trekker “Balloons” Orozco, “and loved it. It’s the lightest of the market for its capacity, well built, and at the right price.”
(To through-hike means to hike an established trail with continuous footsteps in one direction.)
You can learn more about Volpi and his made-in-Mexico ultralight backpack at the U.S. seller Garage Grown Gear‘s website and on Instagram.
The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, since 1985. His most recent book is Outdoors in Western Mexico, Volume Three. More of his writing can be found on his blog.
Long-distance hiker Cam Honan uses an ultralight quilt to stay warm inside a shepherd’s hut in Peru at 4,700 meters. Cam HonanA view of Agnew Meadows on the 4,270-kilometer-long Pacific Crest Trail.
A body hangs from an overpass in Cuauhtémoc on Thursday.
Violence in Zacatecas has left eight municipalities with few or no police officers.
Five of them – Monte Escobedo, Tepetongo, Apulco, Cañitas de Felipe Pescador and El Salvador – have no police at all, according to the newspaper El Universal.
Officers abandoned their jobs due to high levels of violence in the northern state, where criminal groups including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel operate.
Alejandro Arce Pantoja, a security official in Monte Escobedo, said the municipality has had no officers for 11 months. The municipal police chief, who previously led a force with eight members, was murdered at the start of the year, while the former mayor fled Monte Escobedo in May after receiving threats from organized crime.
Arce said the new municipal government wants to reestablish a police force but can’t find anyone interested in joining.
“… Being a municipal police officer is not attractive to people,” he said.
A detachment of state police is currently in charge of public security in Monte Escobedo, located in southwestern Zacatecas on the border with Jalisco.
In Cuauhtémoc, where 10 bodies were left hanging from an overpass on Thursday, the six municipal police officers didn’t report to work after hearing of the grisly discovery, said Mayor Francisco Javier Arcos Ruiz. He said that one had quit and the other five asked to go on leave.
Arcos told El Universal that when he was told that the officers hadn’t shown up for work on Thursday morning, he went to the highway overpass to attend to the crime scene himself. He also said that he patrolled the streets of Cuauhtémoc with Civil Protection personnel on Thursday.
In Villa Hidalgo, also in the southeast of Zacatecas but on the border with San Luis Potosí, several municipal police force officers recently resigned due to threats from organized crime. The police station, which was attacked earlier this month, closed last week due to lack of personnel.
Officers in Zacatecas have good reason to fear for their lives. Thirty-five police have been murdered in the state this year, eight more than in all of 2020.
At the time of his disappearance in December 2023, "El Guacho" was wanted by Mexican authorities for kidnapping, a crime he allegedly committed to secure the release of his imprisoned mother-in-law Rosalinda González. (File photo)
Rosalinda González Valencia is much more than just the wife of Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) leader Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes.
Arrested on money laundering charges in Zapopan, Jalisco, on Monday and remanded in preventative custody, González is allegedly the financial chief of the CJNG, managing its money via its financial arm – a gang founded by her brothers and called Los Cuinis.
Nicknamed La Jefa (The Boss), the 58-year-old has a long criminal history that predates her marriage to El Mencho. She is the niece of Armando Valencia, a patriarch known as El Maradona who founded the Milenio Cartel, a formerly powerful criminal organization that was based in Michoacán.
The Valencia family diversified from the avocado business into the trafficking of marijuana and cocaine in the 1970s and ’80s before later adding synthetic drugs to their portfolio. In the 1990s the Milenio Cartel was among the first criminal groups to begin making synthetic drugs in Mexico, according to a report by the newspaper El País. González was allegedly in the thick of the action, managing the significant revenue the cartel was bringing in.
Rosalinda and her siblings – authorities believe she has about 15 brothers and sisters – dedicated themselves to growing the family’s drug business in the 1990s and later worked together in Los Cuinis, El País said.
CJNG sicarios, ready for battle.
El Mencho, who worked with the Valencia family in its avocado orchards before joining the Milenio Cartel, formed the CJNG in 2010 with other former Milenio Cartel members.
According to El País, authorities consider the CJNG and Los Cuinis to be opposite sides of the same coin. The Jalisco cartel moves drugs and wages turf wars to extend the organization’s influence, while Los Cuinis manages the revenues brought in by the CJNG. The latter has built a business empire to launder those resources that includes hotels, restaurants and even beauty salons, El País said.
Rosalinda González, who was also arrested in 2018 but released from preventative prison on bail, is far from the first member of her family to fall foul of the law. Her uncle, El Maradona, spent 17 years in Mexican and U.S. prisons before being released from a facility in Kentucky last year.
Several of González’s brothers have also been arrested and spent time in prison, including Abigael González Valencia, former leader of Los Cuinis, who was arrested in Puerto Vallarta in 2015 and remains incarcerated. He is collaborating with federal authorities in the case of the 43 students who disappeared in Guerrero in 2014.
Another brother, José, was extradited to the United States from Brazil last week on drug trafficking charges, while the 31-year-old son of Rosalinda and El Mencho, Rubén “El Menchito” Oseguera González, was extradited to the United States on trafficking charges last year. A Colima-based federal judge who heard a case against Menchito was executed along with his wife in front of their young children in June 2020.
Federal security forces carried out an operation to arrest the couple’s daugher, Laisha, and her partner in Zapopan this week but did not locate them. El Mencho and Rosalinda’s other daughter, Jessica, is in prison in the United States on trafficking charges.
El País said the marriage of Rosalinda and El Mencho – who was detained twice in the United States on drug charges while in his 20s and deported to Mexico on both occasions – brought together the power of two worlds: that of bazookas and that of dollars.
Together they built a criminal organization now considered one of the most powerful – and violent – in the world. Formerly known as Los Mata Zetas (The Zeta Killers) for killing scores of members of that criminal organization, the CJNG is perhaps most notorious for shooting down a military helicopter with a rocket launcher in 2015.
