Vehicles under 4 tonnes would have been subject to inspections. shutterstock
A new inspection requirement for light vehicles that was set to take effect in November appears doomed after President López Obrador rejected it due to the cost it would entail for motorists.
The Economy Ministry (SE) announced earlier this month that vehicles weighing less than about 4 tonnes would have to pass semi-regular checks of things such as their bodywork, seatbelts, lights, brakes, wheel alignment, suspension and engine. It didn’t say how much the inspections would cost.
The new regulations followed international standards developed to promote road safety in the interest of public health.
López Obrador told reporters at his regular news conference on Monday that the requirement announced by the SE would be reviewed.
“I had no knowledge [about it]. There are decisions taken by the ministries without consultation,” he said.
“Now we’re making sure that everything that is detrimental to people’s finances is consulted. The government was a mess before because each ministry did what it thought was its role or responsibility [without consulting],” López Obrador said.
“… Establishing this new form of government takes time, … we have to educate the public servants.”
Referring to his intention to scrap the planned inspection requirement, the president said his government wouldn’t “pick people’s pockets” as its predecessors did.
“That was the mentality that prevailed and it hasn’t died yet,” he said.
“They’re processes of change, of transition. We’ve made a lot of progress but … we still have a part of the technocratic conservative thought [in the bureaucracy] that we have to put to one side, not by imposing [our way of thinking] but by persuading, convincing,” López Obrador said.
The rising cost of living is a major concern for the president, with headline inflation hitting a two-decade high of 7.68% in April.
He said late last month that his main concern as president was to control inflation because of the impact it has on family budgets.
The government subsequently announced a six-month plan to curb inflation, the centerpiece of which is an agreement with the private sector to ensure fair prices for 24 products in the canasta básica, a selection of basic foodstuffs including beans, rice, eggs and sugar.
The incident left four tourists injured and the vessel severely damaged.
A breaching whale landed on a boat in Sinaloa on Saturday injuring tourists and doing severe damage to the vessel.
The large mammal leapt in the air to perform one of its characteristic acrobatic jumps at around 6 p.m. in Topolobampo bay in the Gulf of California, 235 kilometers northwest of Culiacán, but crashed into the back end of the small boat on its descent, causing it to almost capsize.
Two men and two women traveling on board were injured and and taken to hospital in Los Mochis and at least one of the men, a former councilor on the Ahome municipal government, was seriously injured.
The vessel’s roof had collapsed and some of the railing were mangled.
The whale had entered the bay a few days earlier. The coordinator of Civil Protection in Ahome, Omar Mendoza Silva, said the whale felt harassed by the proximity of the boat and the port authority in Topolobampo ordered boat captains to keep a prudent distance from the mammals.
The mayor of Ahome, Gerardo Vargas, asked people to respect the whales. “Please do not get too close to the whales. We can enjoy their beauty, but at a distance, prudently,” he said.
The tourism authority of Ahome also called on operators to be more careful near the mammals. “For your safety we ask the maritime community of the Port of Topolobampo to take precautions in the waters of the bay to avoid accidents like the one that occurred this afternoon …” it said in a statement released on Saturday.
The area is well known as a place for whalewatching. Pacific gray, humpback and blue whales migrate to Mexican territorial waters to breed from mid-December to the end of March, depending on the location. In some areas, the season doesn’t end until May.
This was the first incident of its kind recorded in the bay. Three weeks earlier, a boat accidentally collided with a whale in La Paz, Baja California Sur, also in the Gulf of California, injuring five of the six people on board.
Security forces secure a narco-lab in Acuitzio in March 2021.
The army has shut down 23 narco-labs in Michoacán since 2018, over half of which were found in the state’s notoriously violent Tierra Caliente region.
The detection and seizure of the synthetic drug laboratories occurred in a period of almost 4 1/2 years to April 30, 2022, according to information from the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena).
The newspaper Milenio, which obtained the Sedena data via a freedom of information request, reported that most of the dismantled labs were making fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid that Mexican criminal groups make with precursor chemicals from Asia that are smuggled into the country via Pacific coast ports.
It also said that the people who operate the labs have usually fled by the time the authorities arrive.
Five of the 23 labs were located in Buenavista Tomatlán, a Tierra Caliente municipality on the border with Jalisco.
The Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), one of Mexico’s most powerful criminal organizations, and the Cárteles Unidos, a criminal alliance led by Los Viagras, are engaged in a war over control of Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente region, which is made up of 17 municipalities. Other criminal organizations, such as the Nueva Familia Michoacana, also operate in the state.
After Buenavista – one of several Tierra Caliente municipalities where improvised explosive devices laid by the CJNG have been detected in recent months – the highest number of narco-lab seizures occurred in Parácuaro, with four.
A narco-lab seized in Peribán de Ramos, Michoacán in 2020.
Sedena data also shows that the army shut down one lab in each of the Tierra Caliente municipalities of Huetamo, Coalcomán, Turicato and Apatzingán.
Milenio reported that the manufacture of illicit drugs also occurs in urban areas of Michoacán, one of Mexico’s most violent states. A narco-lab was detected in March 2021 in Acuitzio, a municipality that borders the state capital Morelia. Some 230 kilograms of chemicals used to manufacture synthetic drugs as well as drug-making paraphernalia were seized at the lab, which was located in the town of Páramo.
Illegal drugs have also been made in Uruapan, Michoacán’s second largest city.
The only state where more narco-labs have been dismantled in recent years is Sinaloa, home to the powerful Sinaloa Cartel.
Milenio reported that 53 labs where drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine were made have been shut down since 2018 in the northern state.
Citing Sedena data, the newspaper reported last December that the army dismantled 113 synthetic drug laboratories in the first 34 months after President López Obrador took office in late 2018 – a 70% decrease compared to the same period of Enrique Peña Nieto’s presidency.
It said Sunday that Jalisco ranked third for narco-lab seizures, adding that most were detected in two municipalities that border Michoacán’s Tierra Caliente.
Sinaloa, Michoacán and Jalisco are all Pacific coast states, meaning that precursor chemicals don’t have to travel far to reach clandestine fentanyl and meth factories. After manufacture, large quantities of the drugs are shipped to the Mexico-United States border via states such as Durango and Zacatecas, which has been described as a fentanyl nexus.
The synthetic opioid causes tens of thousands of overdose deaths annually in the United States.
A recent organized crime study that determined that Mexico has the fourth highest levels of criminality in the world acknowledged that Mexican cartels are involved in the production and transportation of drugs such as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, a Switzerland-based nongovernmental organization, also said that Mexico’s drug-trafficking organizations are among the most sophisticated mafia-style groups in the world.
Hermosillo, Sonora, teacher Reyna Durazo poses for a Teachers' Day selfie with her students.
The concept of a teacher’s day is not unique to Mexico. Various countries have something like it on various days, and World Teachers’ Day was established on October 5 by UNESCO.
Teachers’ Day caught my attention when I first came to Mexico because neither as a student, a parent or in my initial years as a teacher did I encounter any kind of celebration of the profession — which is officially on May 3 in the United States. In Mexico, it was the first time in any job that I had that anyone thought to honor the work I do.
Here, Teachers’ Day (Día de Maestro) is celebrated on May 15. It was established as delegates negotiated the 1917 Constitution — the current one — as more than a few worked in the profession.
It is not exactly clear why that date was selected. It is the feast day of educator and priest Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, but he was not canonized as the patron saint of teachers by the Vatican until 1950.
The date also commemorates the Battle of Querétaro, an important event in the ousting of the second emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I.
Teachers’ Day festivities organized for educators by a Morelos chapter of the national teachers’ union in 2019.
The establishment of free, public and secular education was extremely important to the framers of the 1917 Constitution. Despite previous reformation attempts, education remained in the hands of the Catholic Church, with little to no opportunities for the poor.
The framers not only sought to diminish the power of the church but also to promote their own values of the new government.
Article 3 of the Constitution specifically refers to public education, tying it, and teachers, to the economic and social development of the country. The importance of the Education Ministry — and the resulting teachers’ unions — was such that until very recently all federal cultural programs were under its purview. The first education minister, José Vasconcelos, established the muralism program in the 1920s, seen as a way to teach a population that was still largely illiterate.
If you have taught in Mexico, you have experienced the near-veneration of being called a maestro/a, always called that even at the supermarket and even if you stop teaching. This attitude is nearly universal today, but teachers’ work was not always so appreciated.
One of the public schools’ main roles was to promote the government’s idea of mexicanismo, or la raza, the idea that everyone is equally Mexican. It resulted in strong pressure for traditional communities to abandon their traditional Catholic practices, leading to a backlash called the Cristero War.
It also led to pushing indigenous communities to forego their languages and traditions to assimilate. Such efforts have waned, but they have not disappeared completely.
Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s first education minister after the Mexican Revolution, recruited artists to teach illiterate Mexicans their nation’s history. Creative Commons
As of the 2018–2019 school year, the Education Ministry (SEP) states that there are 2,100,277 teachers, about 60% of whom work in the primary grades. Like many in the public sector, public school teachers receive small salaries but have important benefits.
Like in other countries, teachers can have issues with receiving sufficient support. One recent problem highlighting this was the lack of computers and training for teachers and students during the pandemic when schools were closed. It is also not unusual for teachers to protest on or near this day.
Teachers’ Day is a highly political holiday both because of this history and the power of the national public school teachers’ union, the SNTE. Politicians may visit schools on this day to show their support for both teachers and education, especially if many parents attend school events.
The day is observed in some shape or form at most schools in Mexico, but exactly how depends on the grade level, the local community and the culture of the given school.
The largest celebrations tend to be in the primary grades, especially in more rural areas. Most Mexicans get at least a primary education, and in rural Mexico teachers are promoted as community leaders.
In urban areas, the day remains important in the primary grades, but they tend to be more abstract.
Detail of Diego Rivera’s mural “Exploitation of Mexico by Spanish Conquistadors.” Begun in 1928, it was meant to teach Mexicans history and inspire pride. Creative Commons
At least some classes and/or other work is suspended to celebrate, either through a meal or even day-long parties and cultural events. Celebrations can be only for teachers or involve the entire local community. The giving of small gifts by individual students or larger ones bought with collected money is also common.
I was a teacher here for 15 years and have some connections with teachers’ groups online. Not scientific by any means, but I did get some feedback from foreign teachers and parents as to their impressions about the celebrations.
The vast majority of foreign teachers and parents strongly support a day to recognize the work of teachers. The idea is best summed up by a comment by Yasuko Azuma:
“It is not only an opportunity to have some rest from a difficult job but also a reminder to society in general that teachers are the most important of all to social, knowledge and cultural development. After the family [and] parents, teachers are the most important …”
Perhaps a little more cynical is a comment by respondent Deborah Harting.
“It’s the one day a year that parents don’t get mad with teachers and show some appreciation.”
Teachers’ Day celebration in Mexico City. Government of Mexico City
However, a few teachers and parents did express some reservations about aspects of the day. A couple of teachers mentioned that it seemed “fake” to get congratulations from parents and students who generally do not respect them the rest of the year. Some found gift-giving to be problematic, sometimes used as a way to curry favor with a teacher as the school year nears its end. In some private schools, the gift-giving can be more than trinkets, even including jewelry.
Such gift-giving is never officially required, but there can be social pressure, even on the parents. However, the likelihood of gifts lessens in the higher grades as students have multiple teachers, which makes the practice more expensive.
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.
Your ginger-soy dipping sauce gets a serious upgrade with traditional Japanese soy sauce.
It’s not often that I have to stop working to go eat what I’m writing about. After you watch the video below you’ll understand, and you’ll never look at soy sauce the same way either.
On a trip to Portland, Oregon, last year, I experienced Japanese food and ingredients in ways I’d never imagined before; it was quite an education.
While most of it isn’t relevant to my life in Mexico, some things are. That’s why I brought back a US $30 quart of high-quality, organic, unpasteurized soy sauce, aged two years in 150-year-old cedarwood kegs — with no regrets.
Obviously, it’s a far cry from the colored, sweetened, flavored water sold under the misnomer of “soy sauce.”
Food science writer Harold McGee describes commercially made soy sauce like this: “Defatted soy meal, the residue of soybean oil production, is broken down — hydrolyzed — into amino acids and sugars with concentrated hydrochloric acid. This caustic mixture is then neutralized with alkaline sodium carbonate and flavored and colored with corn syrup, caramel, water and salt.” Ugh.
How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years — Handmade
I hate being the “food police,” but sometimes it’s sadly necessary. With soy sauce, label-reading is essential.
Maybe you’re thinking that you don’t eat much Asian food, so who cares? What you don’t know is what you’re missing: that elusive umami bomb that’s packed into every drop of authentic soy sauce, adding a rich complexity to everything it touches.
Traditional soy sauce is made from spring water and fermented soybeans and wheat berries — not wheat flour — aged for two to three years in wood barrels. That’s it.
The best brands are aged in barrels more than 100 years old, full of koji — a type of mold — and other yeasts that create flavor and aroma. The resulting unpasteurized (i.e., uncooked) liquid is enzyme- and lactobacillus-rich, full of umami.
China is credited with first brewing soy sauce; the Japanese modified the recipe to include an equal portion of wheat for a sweeter flavor profile. (Korean soy sauce is altogether different.)
The label of a real Japanese-style soy sauce will say nama shoyu, meaning raw/unpasteurized soy sauce. That’s what you’re looking for.
If you’re fortunate — as we are here in Mazatlán — you might find an Asian food store that carries more reputable brands of actual soy sauce. Amazon México offers some, but they’re pricey. Get someone to bring you a bottle next time you have a visitor come from the States.
In the meantime, read labels! The best you’ll probably be able to find are Kikkoman soy sauces, made with only four ingredients — water, soybeans, wheat and salt — and aged for six months. Don’t be fooled by Japanese-sounding names (Satoru, Kaporo); those are full of coloring, sugar, chemical MSG, flour and additives.
A few other things: “light” soy sauce (usukuchi shoyu) is really a type of soy sauce; it doesn’t mean low in sodium. Again, read the label. Traditionally, it has a stronger, saltier flavor, either from the brewing method or from the addition of rice vinegar, mirin or corn syrup.
And tamari isn’t a soy sauce at all; it’s the liquid left after making miso and is 100% soybeans. Those avoiding gluten often choose tamari as a soy sauce substitute to avoid wheat in traditional Japanese soy sauce.
Once you have real soy sauce, you’ll see how versatile it is. The real stuff won’t add an overwhelming “Asian flavor” to foods; instead, it’s natural flavor-enhancing glutamates take flavors to another, richer and more complex level.
Add a teaspoon to gravies, sauces, marinades, chilis and soups and meats of all kinds, from chicken to pork ribs to carne asada and fajitas. Mushrooms taste meatier, store-bought barbecue sauces and soups taste richer, and even that Sunday morning standby, the Bloody Mary, benefits from a splash of salsa de soya.
How can this glazed salmon take so little time yet be so good? Don’t ask, just eat!
Soy-Ginger Sauce
Use for dipping or pour over noodles or rice.
¼ cup soy sauce
2 tsp. minced fresh ginger
Pinch black pepper
2 Tbsp. minced cilantro
Sesame oil to taste
Combine all ingredients and use.
Honey-Soy Sauce Glazed Salmon
1 lb. fresh salmon, cut into 4 filets
Salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. butter, divided
¼ cup soy sauce
¼ cup honey, heated
Pinch garlic powder
½ Tbsp. cornstarch
Fresh lime/lemon juice to taste
Pat salmon dry with a paper towel. Season with salt and pepper. Whisk soy sauce, garlic powder and cornstarch in medium bowl; add honey, mix well and set aside.
In a skillet set to medium-high, heat olive oil and 1 Tbsp. butter. Cook salmon skin-side down 5 minutes; reduce heat to medium, flip and cook another 2–3 minutes till almost cooked through. Add remaining 1 Tbsp. butter to skillet.
When melted, pour in sauce between salmon pieces. Cook about 30 seconds, then remove from heat and flip salmon. Spoon sauce over top. Squeeze lemon/lime juice over fish. Serve immediately.
Soy-Glazed Chicken with Cucumbers
1 English or Persian cucumber, thinly sliced
1 shallot, thinly sliced lengthwise
¼ cup rice vinegar
Salt and pepper
¼ cup soy sauce
2 Tbsp. honey or maple syrup
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (1½-2 lbs.)
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, smashed
1 tsp. ground coriander
For serving: Chopped fresh cilantro and rice
In medium bowl, toss cucumber, shallot, vinegar, 1 tsp. salt and ¼ tsp. pepper; set aside. In a shallow dish, make a marinade of soy sauce and honey/maple syrup; add chicken, turn to coat.
Good quality soy sauce plus honey or maple syrup is the wow factor in this chicken glaze.
In large skillet, heat oil over medium-high. Stir in garlic and coriander. Add chicken (reserving marinade); cook until browned on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. Add reserved marinade and ¼ cup water. Bring to a simmer, reduce heat to medium-low and cook, covered, 4–5 minutes more per side until cooked through.
Uncover skillet, increase heat to medium-high and cook, turning chicken occasionally, until liquid is reduced and chicken is glazed, about 5 minutes. If necessary, whisk in more water one tablespoon at a time until it’s back to a shiny sauce that can be drizzled.)
Serve over rice with cucumber salad and cilantro, drizzled with any leftover glaze, or as a taco or burrito filling.
It’s been over two years since the pandemic started, and it finally seems that — at least in Mexico — we’re looking at the end of it.
For now, at least.
By most accounts, pretty much everyone in Mexico has either had COVID-19, been inoculated against it or both. My kid had it, as did her father. Somehow my partner and I seemed to have escaped it, though who really knows?
A doctor acquaintance of mine asserted that during this last omicron-fueled wave, everybody has definitely had it whether they knew it or not.
This is a tempting theory (I’m really tired of wearing a mask, y’all), though I’m not sure what he based his assertion on. And it doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods.
Still, I’m cautiously optimistic.
The playground that my kid and I used to go to that’s been closed for two years (which is objectively the best one in the city), finally opened back up. Most schools are open again most of the time (with masks).
People are still wearing masks indoors, but outside, where there aren’t crowds, many are starting to feel comfortable about taking them off. There’s a temperature checker and gel at the door of every indoor establishment, but most places no longer have a person standing there to make sure we comply. It’s not necessary, really: we all do it naturally now.
You still have to make appointments with government services for things that were previously available for walk-in attention, but at least there are appointments. They’re hard to get; the appointments I was finally able to make after weeks of attempting to do so for my child’s two passports had to be made months in advance.
Many government offices seem to be holding on to the pandemic as a reason they cannot fully restaff, the United States Embassy included. But I have a feeling that governments have simply realized that they can still get by spending much less money on overworked personnel. I believe they’re totally OK with just inconveniencing people (though I do feel the need to say that the people at the Mexican passport office were extremely nice and organized).
Entire offices remain closed, meaning that many people are simply not being served or must travel great distances (and spend a lot of money) for what was previously available across the street. And good luck trying to see your kids for supervised visitation at the courthouse, a service that has been unavailable for 26 months and counting in my experience.
Still, things are starting to feel a bit like they used to.
Many states have decided that we’re “back to normal.” In Mexico City and Tamaulipas, face masks are no longer required outside. Quintana Roo has also dropped its requirement, as has Jalisco.
Many people, of course, have had to be “back to normal” from the beginning — in the absence of any economic help from the government. (OK, fine: there was like a 20,000-peso loan offered to a handful of people.)
At least most everyone who wanted a vaccine was able to get one. Children 12 and up are finally getting theirs, and while it was said that children aged five years old and up were also going to get them, there’s still no official news on the timing of when that might be.
I’m finally planning on traveling home this summer for the first time in two and a half years and will get a vaccine for my daughter when I do.
It’s been a rough couple of years. I remember hearing “spring/summer of 2022” as a likely ending point for the “emergency” nature of COVID (though not of COVID altogether, which at best seems set to follow the path of the Spanish flu, which is still with us today). When I first heard that, I remember thinking we’d never make it.
But we have “made it” — in Mexico, though with over 600,000 fewer of us. That’s close to half a percentage of the Mexican population, which sounds small, but it’s easily one person every few blocks.
We lost a lot of people and a lot of livelihoods. Let’s do our best to not lose more, OK?
At Monday's press conference, President López Obrador reflected on his weekend tour of several neighboring countries. Presidencia de la República
President López Obrador barely had time to catch his breath last weekend in a lightning tour of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Cuba over just five days.
Monday
The president praised his Central American and Caribbean hosts on Monday, thanking “the peoples and governments for their respectful treatment. I’d call it affectionate and sweet.” He added that Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize were set to benefit from extensions of the Sowing Life tree planting program and the Youths Building the Future apprenticeship scheme.
Tariffs, the tabasqueño said, were to be lifted on meat, fish and agricultural produce from Belize. Another import was set to spike: 500 Cuban doctors were to join Mexican hospitals, the president announced.
The president had particularly warm words for Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who had given him a rather shiny present. “He presented me, in order to return it to Mexicans, a pistol, which is a jewel of history,” he said, and explained that revolutionary and former president Francisco I. Madero had once returned the retro weapon to bandit, fugitive, colonel and revolutionary hero Francisco “Pancho” Villa.
“Cuba has an extraordinary president … An honest, hardworking, human man. A very good person, a good public servant and a good human being,” the president said of Díaz-Canel.
He also reiterated his vision for a union of the nations of America, in the mold of the European Union, and insisted that no government should be excluded from June’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.
Tuesday
López Obrador had a message for moms on Tuesday, as Mexico celebrated Mother’s Day.
“First of all, our most sincere and affectionate, heartfelt congratulations to all the mothers … those who are in our country and those who are abroad … those who are suffering due to their children, due to their disappeared [children]. To those who are sick, or worried about their sick relatives. To the humble, poor women from all communities,” he said and announced a musical performance would close the conference, dedicated to mothers.
The president celebrated a deal between the United States and Venezuela for a U.S. company to extract 1 million barrels of oil per day. “Even if [the deal] was done in the dark … it’s good for Venezuela, it’s good for the United States, it’s good for the world,” he said.
At the end of the Tuesday conference, a jarocho band feted Mexican mothers. Presidencia de la República
“Where are the non-invited [nations] from? … Are they from another continent? Are they from another galaxy? From some unknown planet?” the president gibed.
A 25-strong jarocho string band in traditional Veracruz dress, accompanied by dancers, played out the conference, ensuring Mexican mothers felt appreciated.
Wednesday
The president’s fake news point person, Elizabeth García Vilchis, said a video of a woman complaining about environmental damage was from 2019 and was about illegal logging, not the Maya Train. García added that airlines were not being forced to fly from the new Felipe Ángeles Airport, which has had a slow start since its March opening.
On migration, López Obrador commended the financial contribution of Mexican migrants in the United States, but lamented that Cuban migrants weren’t able to provide the same support.
“In the case of Cuba, nothing [can be sent], because there is a law that prohibits them [sending home remittances]. Where is the humanism? What do people have to do with governments? Why sacrifice the people? … they should declare those people, that island, as a heritage of humanity, for their arrogance to feel free,” he insisted.
The president noted that former U.S. President Donald Trump, famed for his hostile foreign policy, extended the summit invitation to all American nations.
Thursday
“With your permission, Mr. President. As you have instructed, this is the ‘zero impunity’ section. There is no crime without punishment. Justice always prevails,” Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejía Berdeja confidently assured at the start of Thursday’s conference.
For the sake of context, Mexico was behind only the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia and Myanmar on the Global Organized Crime Index 2021, prepared by a Swiss nongovernmental organization. It was ranked 112th for its resilience to organized crime.
Later in the conference, López Obrador said hostility between American nations was unwarranted. “What’s the threat? Is Cuba going to invade the United States, or will Argentina [invade] or Colombia? What good would it do for the United States to invade Colombia or Venezuela, or Mexico?” he said.
Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejía Berdeja presents what he referred to as the “zero impunity” portion of the conference on Thursday. Presidencia de la República
However, the president added that Mexico’s northern neighbor was no stranger to invasions. “How many times have they landed sailors in the countries of America, and have they created countries? … What they are doing with Cuba is genocide, [Colombian author] Gabriel García Márquez said that,” he said, referring to the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.
At least one U.S. citizen, the tabasqueño insisted, was welcome in Mexico. The head of U.S. investment fund BlackRock, Larry Fink, had visited the president on Wednesday. “He’s a smart person, he studied political science … he’s my age, so he is already doddering, just like me,” he jested.
Friday
AMLO was in Nuevo Léon on Friday, accompanied by 34-year-old Governor Samuel García. “This year we have a record in job creation and foreign direct investment. There’s a line of American, Asian, German and Swiss companies,” García enthused.
A range of crimes including murder had increased in the state, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio added. The president said that before the conference he’d met with the parents of Debanhi Escobar, an 18-year-old woman who was found dead in a motel last month in a case that gained nationwide attention.
International affairs returned for the fifth day running. National Action Party (PAN) Senator Lilly Téllez had said López Obrador “doesn’t want to go to the Summit of the Americas because he feels like a dwarf among giants, while feeling huge among tyrants.”
“It’s a point of pride that she calls me that,” the president responded. On the summit, López Obrador stood firm: “If everyone is invited, it will start a new stage of relations in America and it will be owed to President Biden … if it cannot be changed and some countries are excluded … I will definitely not attend,” he said.
Remains of what experts believe was a Mayan altar, in the Comalapa cave. Procuraduría General de Chiapas / INAH
Some 150 skulls found in Chiapas 10 years ago are not the craniums of recent victims of violent crime as investigators originally thought, but belonged to Mayan people who were likely killed in a sacrificial ritual between A.D. 900 and 1200, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced.
Police found the skulls – the majority of which belonged to females – in 2012 in a cave in the southern border municipality of Frontera Comalapa.
INAH said in a statement in late April that investigators believed they were looking at a crime scene and took the skulls to the state capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez for analysis.
“It was thought it was a narco-grave,” INAH researcher Javier Montes de Paz said earlier this week.
The hypothesis was credible given that violence is not uncommon on Mexico’s border with Guatemala, over which hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants travel every year, and the skulls didn’t have holes through each side, as is usually the case with pre-Hispanic craniums. Mayan skulls are also more commonly found in ceremonial plazas than caves.
However, testing and analysis indicated that the skulls in fact came from sacrificial victims killed about 1,000 years ago.
INAH experts said the victims whose skulls were found in the Chiapas cave were probably decapitated in a pre-Hispanic ritual. Their craniums – from which all the teeth were removed – were likely put on a skull rack called a tzompantli, they said.
Instead of discovering a recent crime scene, police found “a thousand-year-old Mayan culture archaeological treasure,” Montes de Paz said.
Most skulls on tzompantlis are strung up on wooden poles using the holes bashed in their sides. However, the INAH experts said that those found in Frontera Comalapa may have been placed atop the poles instead.
Montes de Paz noted that 124 toothless skulls were found in the 1980s in a cave in the Chiapas municipality of La Trinitaria, which is also on the border with Guatemala. Five other skulls that were also probably part of a tzompantli were found in 1993 in a cave in Ocozocoautla, a municipality in Chiapas’ northwest.
Though the owner was unable to pay the fine she received, the animals were eventually released anyway.
Mexico has high impunity rates for many crimes but residents of one municipality in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca have made it clear they won’t tolerate the consumption of grass.
Two sheep were locked up in the municipal jail in Santa Catarina Yosonotú for about 13 hours earlier this week after they were caught chowing down on the pasture of the grounds of a local shelter and school.
Members of the Santa Catarina community assembly decided to incarcerate the shameless sheep for the misdemeanor. The indigenous governing code known as usos y costumbres is used in the municipality, located 4 1/2 hours by car from Oaxaca city.
The owner of the sheep, who apparently took them to the grounds of the shelter/school to graze, was ordered to pay a fine in order to have her animals released but she said she didn’t have the money to do so. The sheep were nevertheless released on Tuesday, according to Santa Catarina Mayor José Aparicio Morales.
The owner, identified as Reyna Morales, had complained that her sheep weren’t given food or water while in the town lockup. She also said she wasn’t allowed to provide them with that sustenance.
The Oaxaca Attorney General’s Office said Wednesday that it had opened an animal cruelty probe in connection with the animals’ incarceration.
Mayor Aparicio rejected any suggestion that the sheep were treated poorly, asserting that they were indeed given food and water.
According to Gerardo Martínez Ortega, an expert in indigenous law, many other animals have been imprisoned in Mexico because they were causing some kind of damage to their local communities. Among those that have spent time behind bars are turkeys, donkeys, goats, cattle and many other sheep.
The Ladies’ Bridge was built in the late 1700s and “disappeared” in 1930. For decades, no one alive in the city remembered where it had been located. Jorge Monroy
A few years ago the story broke.
“¡Lo encontraron!” ran the headlines. They found it! They found Guadalajara’s legendary lost bridge, el Puente de las Damas (the Ladies’ Bridge). There really was such a thing, and at last we know where it is!
This, I thought, was an interesting piece of news, but to me, it seemed a mere nothing in comparison with the much bigger story: that the city had managed to lose the bridge in the first place.
“What?” I exclaimed, “a hundred years ago, Guadalajara lost a bridge 50 meters long 12 meters wide and 15 meters high?”
From the moment I heard the story, I was determined to visit the Ladies’ Bridge in the hope that seeing it up close would reveal how in the world they had managed to lose track of a structure weighing countless tons.
A guide points out the heavy basalt blocks used in the construction of the bridge’s arches.
On March 24, 2022, city officials formally inaugurated a kind of underground and “under-bridge” museum that had been created — at a cost of 6 million pesos — in space that had been hollowed out beneath the elegant arches of the long-lost bridge.
You can visit this unique museum free of charge from Tuesday to Sunday.
“Let’s go!” I told my friends. “We need to learn the curious story of this bridge.”
The museum entrance is at the corner of La Paz and Colón in downtown Guadalajara.
At street level, all you can see are a number of skylights poking out of the sidewalk and a doorway to a small reception room where a maximum of 15 people wait their turn to descend a narrow stairway leading to who-knows-where.
“You will be stooping through low passageways where you could bang your head,” said the guide, “so you may want to wear one of these optional helmets.”
Before the bridge was built, ladies had to cross the Arroyo del Arenal in their long dresses, hopping from stone to stone. INAH
Once helmeted and ready for action, we descended the stairs and passed through a low slot that had been punched through a very thick stone wall, and there we were, gathered inside arch No. 1 of Puente de las Damas.
Guadalajara of the late 1700s was inhabited by mestizos and Spaniards, we learned. To the south, the town ended at a river running through a gully known as el Arroyo del Arenal. On the other side of the gully lived the indigenous people in their own town, appropriately called Mexicalzingo, which means “the place inhabited by the honorable Mexicans.”
Many people were ultra-pious in those days, and the ladies of lineage had the custom of crossing the river every Friday to go visit a celebrated crucifix ensconced in the church of Saint John the Baptist on the other side.
The crucifix was known as The Lord of Penance because once upon a time, teachers used to send their disobedient students to say their penance while kneeling in front of it.
This cross was a cornstalk-paste sculpture, conveniently light for processions, but when it became old and moth-eaten, it was sent to a convent for restoration. Here it supposedly cured a paralyzed nun and suddenly gained a reputation for working miracles.
To visit the miraculous crucifix, the ladies of Guadalajara faced two problems. Number one was a flooded river: every once in a while, during the rainy season, water would pour down from Colli Volcano (at the edge of what is now the Primavera Forest) and flood Arroyo del Arenal. The water level would rise so high that no one could wade across it.
Be prepared for a lot of ducking on this tour. Wearing a helmet may be advisable.
Not only was it impossible for the ladies to visit the church, it was equally impossible for the indigenous people to come to work in the ladies’ homes as servants and laborers.
Problem No. 2 had to do with elegance: the visit to the church was an opportunity for the well-off ladies to display the latest fashions both to one another and also to the folks on the other side of the river, who, in those days before television, probably considered the weekly arrival of the damas as quite an event.
No one looks elegant while wading through water, and, far worse, even the most modest dama was obliged to lift her skirts while hopping from rock to rock, a scandalous situation if there ever was one.
Frustrated, the ladies of Guadalajara appealed to the most important man in town: Fray Antonio Alcalde.
Now Fray Alcalde had managed to get a hospital for Guadalajara as well as its first printing press and had founded the Universidad de Guadalajara on top of that, so how about a beautiful, spacious bridge across which the ladies could sashay in all their finery?
With the help and approval of the venerable friar, who was now in his last years, the ladies succeeded in collecting the necessary funds, and around 1791, the construction of the bridge was begun.
Early sketch with end and section views of the Puente de las Damas.
Today, this is considered Guadalajara’s first collaborative public work, as it was created by and for the people.
Somewhere around 1798, they finished the job. It was one huge, solid bridge built of volcanic rock, so solid that one would believe it should still be doing its job today, continuing to provide a means for people — both elegant and humble — to cross Arroyo del Arenal.
The bridge did, in fact, provide this service for a full 100 years, but things had slowly changed over the years. The Arenal was no longer flooding, and the river that it flowed into, the Río de San Juan, had become black and smelly.
“So,” explained our guide, “in the early 1900s, they replaced the San Juan River with a sewage pipe.”
Suddenly it became clear to me why and how that huge stone bridge had disappeared. The Arroyo Arenal was now a long, dry depression running east and west, and the San Juan was another dry depression running north and south — straight through the most expensive real estate in downtown Guadalajara.
So in 1930, they filled both of these old riverbeds with rubble and created two long strips of very valuable land smack in the heart of the city. Someone surely made a fortune selling lots, and with the passage of time, everyone forgot about the now useless bridge buried four meters beneath Avenida de la Paz.
Model showing the location of the Puente de las Damas beneath downtown Guadalajara.
Was there a referendum 100 years ago asking, “Would you like to preserve this historical old bridge?” I very much doubt it.
So that is how you can lose a 50-meter-long bridge. As for finding it again, the Ministry of Public Works (SIOP) claims credit: they say they were renovating Calle Colón in 2016, and when they stripped away the old bed of asphalt, there it was: a legend transformed into a reality.
But not so fast. There just happens to be a book — out of print, of course — about the Ladies’ Bridge (El Arroyo Del Arenal by José Trinidad González Gutiérrez). The author says that the bridge was rediscovered by one Roberto Rivera Sandoval back on March 30, 1994.
A neighbor of Rivera’s, it seems, had been cleaning up an empty lot on Avenida Colón and had found a hole whose bottom could not be seen. The two of them built a homemade ladder on the spot, and — armed with a rope, a flashlight and a camera — Rivera climbed down four meters to the floor of a pitch-black tunnel oriented east and west.
Down the center of the tunnel ran a canal filled with aguas negras (sewage). Rivera followed the tunnel until it curved, and here he came upon a stone structure which he soon realized was actually an old bridge.
Rivera reported his find to the director of the City Museum, and three days later wriggled back into the tunnel to measure the bridge’s length.
Skylights illuminate the underground museum.
So it seems that the Puente de las Damas has been rediscovered multiple times, and now, thanks to the creation of the Underground Museum, you, too, can rediscover it for yourself — from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. any day of the week but Monday.
To find the door leading down to the buried bridge, just ask Google Maps to take you to Puente de las Damas, Calle Colón, Mexicaltzingo, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
During the hot months of summer, it’s a cool place to visit — almost as cool as a cave!
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.
Women’s fashions of 19th-century Mexico. Museo Nacional de Historia. Mexican Museum of History
Touring the underground museum is something like visiting a cave. @ALVAREZAGLEZ
Inside one of the arches of the underground bridge, visitors learn a bit of its history.
A model of the bridge by Tlaquepaque artist Rodo Padilla features women the size of elephants.
