Mexico Travel Guide and Destinations

Mexico’s Grupo Modelo plans beer price hike

Grupo Modelo, a Mexican brewery half owned by Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., plans to raise its beer prices in Mexico Jan. 1, according to published reports.

The increase will be in line with expected inflation, the Mexico City-based brewer reportedly said in a Dec. 23 filing with the Mexican Stock Exchange. Modelo also said the increase takes into account tax law changes favoring recycled containers.

Mexico’s annual inflation rate fell to 2.9 percent at the end of November but is expected to climb to 3.5 percent by many fund managers, according to media reports.

Grupo Modelo exports five brands, including Corona products, and is the exclusive importer and distributor of Anheuser-Busch’s products in Mexico.

St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. (NYSE: BUD), the largest domestic brewer, manufactures and recycles aluminum cans and operates theme parks.

More: stlouis.bizjournals.com

Pulte Homes Sells Mexico Operations

Pulte Homes, Inc., based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., has sold its Mexico homebuilding operation to a group of investors led by affiliates of Walton Street Capital, a Chicago based real estate investment company, and advised by Banc of America Securities and Hipotecaria Su Casita, Mexico’s largest independent Sofol.

Pulte Mexico, which began operations in 1994, was on track to deliver more than 7, 000 homes in 2005. As a result of this transaction, Pulte’s Mexico homebuilding operation will be reported as Discontinued Operations effective with the Company’s fourth quarter 2005 financial results.

Soure: home.nestor.minsk.by

GE Energy’s Nuclear Business Wins Contract to Boost Mexico Nuclear Plant’s Output

GE Energy’s nuclear business has been awarded a contract to support the next phase of a Mexico utility’s preparations for an extended power uprate (EPU) at the Laguna Verde Nuclear Power Plant in Mexico.

Originally designed by GE, each of Laguna Verde’s two boiling water reactors (BWRs) has an output of 695 megawatts. The plant is located in the state of Veracruz, 70 kilometers northwest of the city of Veracruz and 60 kilometers northwest of the city of Jalapa, the state capital, along the Gulf Coast.

Plant operator Comision Federal de Electricidad (CFE) awarded GE the contract to provide the safety and licensing evaluations required to support plans to boost Laguna Verde’s output by as much as 20%.

Under its multi-phase contract with CFE, GE will provide the engineering analyses required to support development of a Safety Analysis Report (SAR), which will be submitted to Mexico’s nuclear regulator for approval. In addition, GE will implement its Performance 20(SM) reliability evaluation product to identify plant modifications and preventative maintenance programs that maintain or improve plant reliability and availability at the increased power levels.

The EPU uses GE’s latest nuclear technology to improve plant output (by up to 20%) and generates other benefits that include operation at reduced core flows for enhanced plant operation; improvements to the power range neutron-monitoring system; and use of the advanced TRACG core-wide transient nuclear analysis model, which provides a more realistic and less restrictive analysis of plant performance.

More: home.businesswire.com

Mexico Lacks Clear Migratory Policy

The lack of a clear Mexican migratory policy puts it at a real disadvantage in defending the rights of its migrants that cross the US border against the northern nation´s repressive practices, La Jornada editorialized Thursday.

Referring to the US House-approved law that includes building a long wall and reinforcing border police, the daily pointed out that this will mean an increase in the already high number of people who die each year attempting to cross the frontier.

The Mexican government´s moral dilemma is how to demand fundamental rights of migrants when it applies similar repressive measures on the southern border, ombudsman Jose Luis Soberanes lamented.

He pointed out the high degree of marginalization and maltreatment Central American migrants receive in their stay in the 51 migratory stations and 68 similar spaces in Mexico, where 76 percent of these installations are in seriously bad condition.

More: plenglish.com

Exorcisms Rise in Mexico, Keeping Father Mendoza, Healers Busy

Father Pedro Mendoza Pantoja, the Roman Catholic Church’s highest-ranking exorcist in Mexico City, has never been busier.

Mendoza, 70, takes 15 phone calls a day from people who say they are possessed by the devil and sees about five of them for in-office consultations. They’re part of the increasing number of Mexicans demanding exorcisms.

“Growing up, I don’t remember a single person possessed by a demon,'’ Mendoza said from his parish in Cuajimalpa, a town on the outskirts of Mexico City. “Every time a girl gets sick or acts strange, they send her over.'’

Mexico is part of a global surge in exorcisms sparked by the Vatican’s decision in 1999 to issue a new manual for the process, said Scott Lilienfeld, a professor of psychology at Emory University in Atlanta. Ninety-two percent of Mexico’s 106 million people are Catholic.

The instructions on carrying out exorcisms are contained in the 84-page Roman Ritual, a book produced by the Vatican to outline how prayers and ceremonies should be handled. The revision to the section on exorcisms, the first since 1614, was made to reduce injuries and deaths, Lilienfeld said.

More: bloomberg.com

Potters’ town booming in northern Mexico

For decades this dusty high-plains Mexican village of ranchers and railroad workers was rich only in burial sites and ruins left by the area’s long-dead Paquime Indians.

But now almost every family in Mata Ortiz, a collection of 300 adobe houses and ranches several hours drive southeast of Tucson, Arizona, is making coil pots inspired by Paquime traders and artisans who once lived in a nearby city of two-story homes and open plazas. They disappeared in the 15th century.

Worked up from local clay deposits that range from creamy white to red, green and blue, the colorful pots form a canvas for abstract geometric designs, animal motifs and delicately engraved patterns.

Some are hawked fresh from firewood kilns by local artisans for a few pesos (about $3). Others are showcased in art galleries in the dusty main street where they sell for up to $4,000 to collectors from the United States, Europe and Asia.

The striking revival is because of one man, Juan Quezada, who set out to recreate the Paquime style after finding a stash of brightly decorated pots in a sealed burial cave while scouring the high sierra for firewood as a youngster in the 1950s.

More: today.reuters.com

Container ship still stuck on sand bar off Ensenada

A private U.S. company was working Thursday to rescue a container ship that has been hung up on a beach off Mexico’s northern Pacific coast since Christmas Day, a Mexican port captain confirmed.

The Antigua & Barbuda-registered barge, bearing the name APL Panama and originating in Oakland, was preparing to enter the Mexican port of Ensenada on Dec. 25 when it became stuck about 1.5 miles south of its destination, port Capt. Jose Luis Rios Hernandez told The Associated Press by telephone.

Mexican officials hired a U.S company specializing in marine salvage operations to rescue the ship, but so far the company has had no luck, Hernandez said.

The captain added that he believed it might take as much as a month to free the ship’s hull and propellers from the sand. The 850-foot-long ship was carrying about 35,000 tons of cargo, Rios said.

Officials had not determined the cause of the mishap and the captain of the ship had not yet given a statement, he said.

More: signonsandiego.com

Body of young girl found in suitcase in Mexico

Police discovered the body of a young girl on Thursday that had been stuck inside a suitcase and left on a busy sidewalk in Mexico City.

Investigators were working to identify the girl, thought to be between 5 and 6 years old, and establish the cause of death, a police spokeswoman said.

She was found inside the suitcase, dressed but missing her shoes and wrapped in a jacket, by a police patrol in the district of Tacuba on Thursday morning.

Police discovered the body of a young girl on Thursday that had been stuck inside a suitcase and left on a busy sidewalk in Mexico City.

Investigators were working to identify the girl, thought to be between 5 and 6 years old, and establish the cause of death, a police spokeswoman said.

She was found inside the suitcase, dressed but missing her shoes and wrapped in a jacket, by a police patrol in the district of Tacuba on Thursday morning.

More: msnbc.msn.com

Cuban Educational Program a Success in Mexico

Over 266,000 Mexicans have been taught to read and write using the Cuban method “Yo si puedo"(Yes, I can), which is currently being implemented in 10 municipalities of that country.

According to Granma newspaper, some 10,500 young voluntary twelfth graders under the supervision of Cuban professors give the classes.

On a visit to Cuba, at the beginning of 2005, the governor of Michoacan, Lazaro Cardenas, praised the Cuban methodology, which has already eliminated illiteracy in some regions.

Thanks to the 3-year-old “Yo si puedo” project, more than one million people were taught to read and write in Venezuela where it was implemented originally.

The Cuban method is also being used in Uruguay, Haiti, Argentina, Honduras, Brazil, New Zealand, among others.

More: vanguardia.co.cu

Mexico seeks international support against deadly US border wall

US lawmakers proposed to build some 700 miles of barriers to stop illegal immigration from the South.

Sixteen years after the fall of the Berlin wall, another barrier of bricks is being fuelled to separate two nations and stop immigration. A proposal by U.S. lawmakers to build some 1,130 kilometers of barriers along their nation’s southern border as part of efforts to stop illegal immigration has irritated Mexicans, who are seeking international support to block Washington’s plans.

The Mexican Congress is asking legislatures in Spain, Portugal and Latin American countries to join a coalition against the US proposal. The request, backed by the Mexican President Vicente Fox, is contained in a letter drafted by the speaker of the Mexican lower house, Heliodoro Diaz.

“I hereby ask you, in an act of unity among Ibero-American Congresses, that you share our concern about and condemnation of (the U.S. wall), and that you express the deepest solidarity with the Mexican Congress, in order to impede the construction of a wall on the border of the United States of America with Mexico, and the approval of the law promoting it,” says the missive.

More: english.pravda.ru