Catemaco Homshuk

Catemaco actually has a Harvard graduate.

It's most famous former resident, supposedly from Tenaspi Island in the Catemaco lake apparently disappeared from Catemaco and turned up at Harvard University. From there he reappeared at the Anthropology Museum in Xalapa, Veracruz.

Clicking on the photo or link, which will take you to a nice fable about the small statue, supposedly of the Popoluca god "Homshuk", first identified by Frans Blom in 1925 in Catemaco.

Laguna de Catemaco and the Homshuk Legend

Catemaco and the Four Winds

In 1933, the somnolent village of Catemaco first made international headlines.

On the 10th of June 1933, two Spanish airmen set off from Spain for Cuba to fly 40 hours in the first successful  non stop crossing of the central Atlantic in a single engine aircraft.

Early morning on June 20th the plane left Cuba for Mexico City, where 60 000 celebrants eagerly awaited the plane`s arrival.

Curiously, the flight was only planned to Villa Hermosa in the neighboring state of Tabasco, where it never landed. From there, the Four Winds (Cuatro Vientos in Spanish) disappeared into the haze of mystery.

The Mexican Air Force immediately dispatched a squadron of search and rescue planes, one of which later made an emergency landing in nearby San Andrés Tuxtla and provided Los Tuxtlas with the thrill of its first aviation experience.

The flight of the Cuatro Vientos was the equivalent of the Lindbergh experience in the Latin world and received huge press and radio coverage.

After the unsuccessful air search, hampered by bad weather, the then Mexican president,  presuming the crash occurred in Los Tuxtlas, ordered an expeditionary force to begin a ground search. The operations center was to be Catemaco, and the sleepy village became inundated with  reporters and searchers, depleting the shelves of its few grocery stores.

Locals guided the unsuccessful searchers through the surrounding jungles, where two died of snake bites and many more came down with tropical diseases.

The fate of the aircraft and its crew has never been officially explained. The most popular story claims the aviators crashed in the nearby Mazateca region of the Oaxaca mountains and were then killed and buried by natives. In 2008 a Mexican colonel reported it actually crashed in Veracruz mountains north of Los Tuxtlas.
Conspiracy buffs of course believe the Mexican government buried the facts to avoid international embarrassment.

Catemaco had gotten its first taste of flying, and soon an airfield was leveled near the El Cerrito hill which is now the center of the town. Nearby San Andrès actually operated an airfield with scheduled flights to a number of cities. All that ended coincident with an airliner flying into a mountain in the 1950's.

Both airfields have disappeared. A dirt strip outside of San Andrés receives an occasional aircraft and for years now, Los Tuxtlas is humming with political promises of a new airport to be built.


Read about the history of the flight, in Spanish, of course:
http://historiasindelebles.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/chilchotla-esconde-un-secreto-el-final-del-cuatro-vientos/

Catemaco Beaches

Well, these two really are not in Catemaco, but  few people know  that they are in San Andrès Tuxtla, the largest burg in Los Tuxtlas.

I stopped publishing English stories in catemaco.info a year ago.  This one is a temporary rarity, because it is still awaiting translation to Spanish. I am mentioning it here, because it has 2 nice videos.

Visita a Montepío y Balzapote

Catemaco Deads

Catemaco seriously needs more dead people, or maybe a kidnapping. That is when newspaper readership of local rags doubles and triples in exemplars sold. That is according to the only news distributor in Catemaco who claims to average less than 250 sales per day of mostly state newspapers.

UPDATE:
Since I wrote this, two cadavers from the neighboring town of San Andrès were found in Catemaco, promptly fueling a media spike about Catemaco, and sending my readership through the roof.
Update 2
Ok, we had a major kidnapping, of the brother of a previously kidnapped Catemaco hardware store owner in neighboring San Andres. Yikes, what a spike in Spanish readership!

The municipality of roughly 48 thousand inhabitants of Catemaco has No newspaper, No television, and No Radio! Radio arrives from San Andrés Tuxtla, TV from Veracruz City.

News in Catemaco is served by two flyers appearing whenever a juicy crime happens. Any other news arrives from the neighboring city of San Andrès Tuxtla, which is possibly equipped with more news rags and columnists than its relatively few literate inhabitants need.

Usually the only news filtering out of Catemaco is political events, including up to dozens of the names of attendees, and very little about what actually happened..

The only daily is Diario Los Tuxtlas
Possibly the worst newspaper on the internet. Always takes vacations on weekends, appears a day or two after its original publication and often, in the past, runs out of availability on the internet because of failure to buy sufficient bandwidth.

Appearing 2 to 3 times a week is the Diario Eyipantla Milenio.
The oldest new rag in Los Tuxtlas has nothing to do with a Daily, Millenium or Eyipantla, and of course its news worthy stories are somewhat stale. Nevertheless, it is the only local news source that presents an idea of what is going on locally, aside from reprinting political handouts.

There are also several weeklies:

Palestra
This is a weekly that rehashes what happened during the last week, supplanted by political feel goods, and an amazing amount of national columnists having absolutely nothing to do with Los Tuxtlas. To give them credit, they also publish a few musing of local writers, including a columnist from Catemaco.

A five municpality rag, Periodico de San Andres, Catemaco, Hueyapan, etc. also publishes once a week.
Aside from that there are others, that go into print whenever they feel like it: Politica en Los Tuxtlas, Perfil Diario, Renovacion. And then there are internet versions like: Sucesos Los Tuxtlas, Informantes en Red, and political bloggers like:  Francoenlinea, Revista Juicio, El Pregòn de Los Tuxtlas, etc.

See the complete linked  list of news sources:
Catemaco Diario - fuentes de noticias

The Colors of Catemaco

At times the lake of Catemaco shimmers with more colors than the famous Laguna Bacalar in Quintanta Roo. At other time, when the strong winds of summer churn strong, beautiful storm waves, the lakes`s waters glitter bright blue between brillant white froth. The rest of the time, the lake vacillates among shades of light brown and weird green. 

I guess green is what the current mayor of Catemaco saw, when he began painting the municipal infrastructure a bright shade of green. 

The mayor before him saw red, and painted anything available to slap paint over, a nice obnoxious red, incluiding the street curbs. 

The mayor before him, obviously a whimp, painted all of the Catemaco Malecón in white.
 That is after his predecessor painted the same structures black. 

Curiously, except for the red mayor, all others, including the current one, paint the curbs of their new streets bright yellow, which only last as long as about a third of their term in office. 

A gallon of paint costs about the equivalent of  4 daily minimal salaries. 

Of course everybody loves the colors of Mexico!

Say hello to the new Catemaco monkeys

Depiste reservations by any naturalists in their right mind, the powers that be yesterday transferred a troop of 12 Spider moneys, including 2 males to a little bitty island in Lake Catemaco.

The former occupants, remnants of a troop of asiatic Macaque monkeys imported 35 years ago, apparently lost their local birthright and are to be shipped to a nature park in Quintana Roo.

Here are some photos from the transfer:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.296343160390271.77590.252372091454045&type=3

Let`s hope the banana throwing tourists appreciate these extremely endangered monkeys.

Read more about Catemaco monkeys here:
http://www.catemaco.info/catemaco/geo/primates.html