August 2004

Mexican football champions Pumas (UNAM) take on the mighty Real Madrid in a friendly tonight. The Spanish club are expected to field England captain David Beckham and new signing Michael Owen for the first 45 minutes at the Bernabeu – a compromise agreed between club and country.

England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson will sweat on two of his key players, hoping they come through the match unscathed so that they can jet off to rejoin the national squad ahead of the crucial World Cup qualifiers against Austria and Poland on 4 and 8 September.

Owen vs Hugo Sanchez

If he plays, Owen will be making his home debut for los galacticos. Pumas’ head coach is Hugo Sanchez – a legendary No.9 for Madrid in the 1980s, a master of the overhead kick and arguably the best player Mexico has ever produced.

In February I reported that the fragile Monarch butterfly colonies overwintering in central Mexico had been affected by a cold snap. Recently, new evidence has come to light of extensive illegal logging practices. Photos published on the Monarch Watch website clearly show the extent of the felling and the kind of illegal logging occurring in the protected ‘buffer zones’ surrounding the butterfly sanctuaries. This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle earlier this week with an excellent map.

Photo credit: Wing detail, female Monarch © courtesy William Zittrich

It’s silver… behind Bahamian Tonique Williams-Darling in a season’s best time of 49.56 secs.

Back home in Nogales, Sonora, her father, Cesar, stayed focused on the screen, hardly touching the cigarette he had lit. More reaction.

“Ana-mania” is building to a fever pitch. A nation holds it’s breath. Later today, world champion Ana Guevara seeks to win Mexico’s first medal in Athens and become her country’s first ever track & field Olympic gold-medallist. The race begins at 20:50 BST / 14:50 Mexico City.

Robin Bailey was about 10 years old when he first heard stories about his great grandfather’s trips to Mexico. Arthur – or “Arturo” as he is still referred to in Mexico – became involved with Maria, a cotton factory worker in the same factory where he became a director. They had a child, who had eleven children, all of whom had many more children…

Robin has sinced traced 300 relatives in Mexico. Fascinating story, which he told on BBC Radio 4′s Home Truths programme last Saturday. Thanks to Ian Mursell of Mexicolore for the pointer.

In recent weeks, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has made public its concern about the rise in organised gangs entering churches and nabbing everything from paintings and statuary to decorative robes and historical documents, reports Monica Campbell for the CSM.

There are about 17,000 churches in Mexico holding somewhere in the region of 4 million Mexican or Spanish Colonial religious objects. While a programme to document these important pieces began thirty years ago, only a tiny proportion – maybe 1.5 per cent – have been registered.

Artist and writer Richard Perry publishes the Exploring Colonial Mexico website. He tells me that INAH’s concern is well-founded; “looting of churches is definitely on the rise in Mexico.” Richard has produced a series of wonderful illustrated guidebooks that cover the most interesting regions of colonial Mexico. He says that “given the seemingly bottomless appetite and appreciating prices for ‘folk art’ among [North] American collectors and colonial religious images among Mexicans and Latin Americans, this trend can only worsen.

“While the monitoring of pre-Columbian [archaeological] sites has improved, the relative insecurity of most churches and their easily portable artefacts has made them more vulnerable. There are so many churches, and with inadequate local resources it is open season. Even if there is a local guardian, this lucrative traffic opens up new opportunities for corruption, especially in poor rural areas.”

Art antiques shops such as this one in San Francisco are now more commonplace [Editor's note: no suggestion of wrongdoing].

Mexico will come to a standstill on Saturday. The nation’s sporting idol will settle into her blocks for the women’s 400m heats inside the Olympic Stadium in Athens. She will be wearing spiked running shoes that are either red, green or white – the colours of the Mexican tricolor. Mexicans everywhere will cross themselves, don amulets and clasp good luck charms. Her country’s first ever Olympic track and field medal beckons.

So begins Ana Guevara’s quest for Gold.

The Olympic final is on Tuesday. If you’re in Mexico, expect to see it – a recent televised race featuring Guevara drew an estimated television audience of 50 million, half the population. Two years ago I got caught up in a scrum of media and fans meeting their idol off a plane at Mexico City airport. She is arguably the nation’s biggest sporting superstar.

Ana G became the first Mexican to win a gold medal in her sport when she powered to victory in Paris last August. The border town of Nogales, her birthplace, has cast her original running shoes in bronze.

Unstoppable throughout 2002 and 2003, Guevara was beaten by her chief rival in Rome last month, so suddenly the world champion looks vulnerable. Nevertheless, for the next few days all Mexicans – Guevara transcends the gender barrier in Mexico – will live out the Olympic dream.

Rodolfo Elizondo Torres’ appointment as Tourism Secretary almost exactly one year ago immediately revived speculation that the 57-year ban on gambling in Mexico would soon be lifted. An advocate for casinos when he served both in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, in his first press conference after moving to Tourism, Elizondo reiterated his enthusiasm for casinos. Saying that “Mexico could become the second Las Vegas,” he maintained that regulated casinos are needed by the national tourism sector.

It now seems more likely than not that Mexican legislators will vote in September to revise La Ley Federal de Juegos y Sorteos, the anti-gambling law. The August edition of Casino Review takes up the story in this balanced article (pdf document – 144KB).

I’ve no desire or inclination to gamble and have never stepped onto any plush casino carpet, so I guess I’m predisposed to feeling slightly uncomfortable about this new tourism priority.

Following my recent piece on the threat to the Leatherback turtle, we’ve learned that UK-based Echo Communities have a fantastic opportunity for anyone looking to take part in a popular 3-month gap year sea turtle conservation project in Oaxaca, starting at the end of September 2004.

Not only will volunteers get to live and work on a beach on the Pacific coast of Mexico, but a last-minute discount is being offered to fill the one remaining place on the project, which is located near Mazunte.

Contact Pete Masters on 07971 853 927.

The NOAA has reiterated its May 2004 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook by predicting 12 to 15 tropical storms, with 6 to 8 becoming hurricanes. Historically, hurricanes are more likely from mid-August to November, when the ‘season’ ends.

Mexico suffered two especially severe storms in 2002 when “Isidore” devastated the Yucatán in September and “Kenna” tore up Puerto Vallarta on the Pacific coast (pictured) one month later. New roads had to be built to replace those washed away and in Puerto Vallarta the malecon – oceanfront promenade – reconstructed.