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

La Panga

For many years, La Panga was Catemaco City's finest civilized entertainment locale for adults.

"Panga" means small ferry in Mexico, elsewhere it describes various fishes.

Built on stilts within the Catemaco lake, the place offered a great view, especially on moon lit nights. Live music on weekends stayed on the romantic side and the owners¡ selection of piped in music was remarkable. Their liquor selection was excellent, and after beating them over the head, they even began serving coffee in the winter. Regular clients were primarily from San Andrès plus a small cadre of Catemaco connoisseurs.

Historically Catemaco has had numerous "things" built on stilts along the lake shore, but they disappeared, until in the very late 1990's, the then owners of the Hotel del Lago received a federal concession to build in the lake across from the hotel.

Some time after 2005, the then municipal administration sued to revoke the concession, but lost. A while later the owner ran into legal problems and fled to the Yucatan while trying to sell the place for 1.5 million pesos. Deterioration set in, the music stopped and regulars disappeared.

Just before the Catemaco flood of 2010, half of a La Panga was decapitated and its pier and flooring became dangerous to tread.  Local rumors now claim the owner leased the place, or maybe she sold it to the former secretary of Catemaco tourism, famous for promoting discos with noise levels of rocket testing facilities, and his then boss, famous for trying to turn the Malecon into a beer orgy.

Significant reconstruction has been under way for several months and should be completed soon.

I sincerely hope La Panga retains its original format, and reverts to being one of Catemaco's most attractive landmarks.

See more of La Panga (mañana)

when it is finished

Casa de los Tesoros, Catemaco

The daughter of the former owner, fondly known as Fool on the Hill, of the best handicrafts store in southern Veracruz, La Casa de los Tesoros, reopened her parent´s dream after 20 years, below the basilica, in an upstairs locale with a grand view of the plaza.

The store now includes a limited bistro menu featuring bagels, novel omelettes, great wines, desserts and Japanese tea.

Despite monthly buying trips to Oaxaca, Guatemala and other trinket centers, she now has a hard time keeping her shelves full.

Meanwhile, because of the convivial atmosphere, most Catemaco newcomers and foreign tourists have made the "Casa Lost" their favorite home away from home.

Catemaco Loft

Here you may select a book or other reading material and - sipping your coffee, tea, wine or whatever - relax comfortably in a hammock or seat, reading peacefully.

We have a broad range of fiction and non-fiction in English and Spanish.

Our Book Exchange Plan is based on the principle of "bring a book - take a book". You may borrow as many books as you wish, replacing them with an equal number of books that you have brought. If you do not presently have a book to exchange, speak with us and we'll work something out.

(We will also gladly accept donations of used or new books. We are especially in need of Spanish language books at present.)

We plan on showing films every Wednesday evening at 7:30, free of charge to our customers. These films will include both documentaries and commercial films.

WiFi, of course, is available free to our customers in " the loft ".

We sincerely hope that " the loft " will be an added pleasure for our customers, and that it will promote reading, through our free book exchange plan, among the residents, our amigos, of Catemaco and Los Tuxtlas.

Visit "the loft "

La Casa de Los Tesoros

Calle Aldama Altos #4

Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico

(Third floor, on the lake side of the Church of the Virgen del Carmen)

(294) 943 2910

" the loft " is available for meetings and presentations; including video and sound equipment.

Catemaco Curp

Bureaucracy in beautiful downtown Catemaco can be as much a mind blower as anywhere in the world.

Those tiny blanks that have yet to be filled out cause nightmares in many business transaction. Even the last dimwit effort to register cellular phones needed a CURP. And promptly a few thousand people supposedly registered themselves with the CURP of the Mexican president.

So what is a CURP?  It is "Clave Única de Registro de Población"  which gruesomely translates to Unique Population Registration Code. It is used similar to a social security number, and everybody has one, except most gringos.

The RFC stands for "Registro Federal de Contribuyentes" and translates to Federal Taxpayer Registry. It is used primarily in business transactions involving taxes, or efforts to avoid them.

The biggy though is the so called "Credencial de Elector", that is actually the "Credencial para Votar". It is the equivalent of  a voter registration card, and is the most common ID for people that have no driver's licence. It uses the CURP.

All three documents come with assorted pretty documents and cards to carry around. The cards you can fake with photoshop.  The numbers, till now, were a little harder.

I am now an almost complete Mexican because I use my Mexican driver's license instead of a "Credencial"

Click here to become an illegal alien

Wrong turn Catemaco

I never knew that one could find Catemaco by taking a wrong turn, but apparently this author did, and managed to write a great review of the neighboring cigar industry.

Tabacalera Alberto: What's smoking with Mexico's leading cigar maker?

Rancho Flores, Catemaco

Rancho Flores is a working farm and private ecological reserve that recently opened its doors to visitors.The ranch is located along Catemaco's largest river, about 700 feet above the southern shore of Laguna Catemaco in the Sierra Santa Marta foothills.

Visit Rancho Flores

Catemaco TV

Beautiful downtown Catemaco is hemmed between a few lovely volcanoes and antenna TV reception is therefore lousy. Talks of installing a repeater antenna have been in the "mañana" stage for years.

But much of Catemaco is wired for cable TV, which is impressive considering that most of the population earns less than two months of cable TV service per week.

The local monopolistic provider is Cablecom, a national outfit with about 3 million subscribers in Mexico. They provide possibly the finest gringo oriented selection of channels that I have experienced in Mexico hotels. At any time, there are usually up to 10 English speaking channels online, plus the occasional German or French ones.

Of course you have to spend most of your time channel surfing because this monopoly provides neither an on-air, internet or printed program directory.  And of course you have to hoof it to their offices to pay the monthly bill, because that is the only way they do business in Catemaco. If you forget, 10 days later a ladder truck rolls up and snips your cable line. One benefit, though, is being able to hook up half a dozen tellies for the same price, 286 pesos per month. (Forget about premium channels).

Satellite dishes are also available, with a comfortable package for one TV costing around 750 pesos.  Itty bitty VE dishes are now popping up with basic service around 310 pesos.

None of the services offer internet.

Catemaco Prestanombre

That sounds like something religious. But it is not. Here in beautiful downtown Catemaco and elsewhere in Mexico, a "prestanombre" is the name of a person used to buy property in favor of someone else.

Primarily a prestanombre is used by politicians or similars to hide their ownership, but it is also used by gringos to buy properties in the 50 kilometer restricted zone of the Mexican coast.

My Popoluca is my prestanombre. Unfortunately today I met a 10 year local resident gringo who also used a prestanombre. She recently kicked him out and he is now living in a grass shack nearby.

Obviously he has no recourse because his property is in the name of a prestanombre.

So I went out and bought a box of her favorite cookies for my Popoluca.

Catemaco Walmart

Life in beautiful downtown Catemaco just got more complicated. Today Walmart opened the smallest size store in its arsenal on the main road leading into Catemaco.

The new so called Bodega Aurrera has only about a third of the items in a full size Aurrera and less than 15% of a full size Mexican Walmart.

So now, instead of getting my staples at the local Rodeo mini supermarket, I will probably shop at Bodega because it has a slighly larger selection and some frozen items. I then have to visit San Andres to shop at Aurrera and Soriana to buy the stuff missing in Catemaco. Then of course I have to make a frequent trip to Veracruz to get anything slightly unusal. And after that, of course there is mail order for stuff I simply cannot live without.

AH, progress in Catemaco is painful.

Catemaco.com

Beautiful downtown Catemaco is a hotbed of internet manipulations. One would think that this godforsaken paradise in Los Tuxtlas would not generate enough interest to internet warriors.

The usual domains:
catemaco.com - owned by an internet domain trader, refused a US 1000 dollar offer.
catemaco.info - I own it, whoopeedo!
catemaco.org - owned by a shoestring resort operator, against  all .org domain rules.
catemaco.net - owned by someone in Xalapa, Veracruz without  a website.

The Mexican Domains
catemaco.com.mx - now owned by a domain trader. The original Catemaco owner was too mad at me for starting a competing page and rejected my $ 1000 for the domain name, and when he was too broke to pay for the renewal, I missed out on the new registration.
catemaco.mx - became available in October  09 and is now owned by a domain trader.
catemaco.gob.mx - the official Catemaco government site. The page is dead, of course!

Other names in use
hotelcatemaco.net - Hotel Catemaco

I also own
catemaconoticias.com and
catemaconews.com, and
hotelcatemaco.com - I registered it because I was and am disenchated with them, to put it mildly. 

Google lately has been changinging its search algorithms and  seems to be very much preferential to searches in Spanish for sites with any latin country domain suffix instead of  the language used on the web site.

So I looked to register a few quicky .mx or .com.mx names.
It turns out Mexico is the most expensive place in the world to register a domain name! Instead of the usual $7.99 cost to register most international domains, I am now quoted US $ 50.00 by the Mexican registration agency. (They are so backward that they still do not publicize the increased .mx costs).

Catemaco Subdivisions

Selling tiny bits of Catemaco is BIG business.

Aside from the dozens of established colonias (neighborhoods) in Catemaco, there are also dozens of newer colonias in the hills of Catemaco that are sparsely populated, generally lack city water, electricity and paved roads. Almost monthly newer colonias are being promoted, and sold, without any municipal services.

Veracruz has a substantial, reasonable set of laws on the books that are supposed to control subdivisions (colonias). These laws require water, drainage, sewage and adequate roads.

All these laws in Catemaco and elsewhere in Mexico are circumvented by receiving permission from a municipal mayor to subdivide a terrain. Usually this involves a strawman purchase of up to 10 % of the lots involved in the subdiivision in favor of the mayor.

A current political aspirant of Catemaco announced a new colonia to house 156 families, offering the lots at 4500 pesos with a 2000 pesos downpayment, designed for extremely low income habitants in a federally protected reserve. Naturally none of the lots have any municipal facilities.

On a daily basis, inhabitants of the previously established colonias with a few built homes, demand that the municipal government provide them with water, electricity and drainage. And, as political expediency permits, rudimentary facilities are extended to these areas, primarily in order for the current mayor to garner good will and steal at least 10% of the cost of the projects.

The built out costs of these older and new colonias is enormous and an extraordinary hardship on municipal finances, primarily because of extraordinarily low property taxes in Catemaco and most of Mexico.

draft
target="_blank"

Krishnas en Catemaco

A coterie of Krsna devotees have settled near Las Margaritas on the south shore of Laguna Catemaco and


"...I think it will be called simply Catemaco Ayurveda Institute, or Instituto Ayurveda de Catemaco in Spanish. We will offer healing water from Las Margaritas Spring through Internet stores on Amazon, Yahoo and eBay. We also will plant a lot of Tulasi, and offer the leaves and extracts as products...


The Lake Camp and Retreat Center are now ready to receive visitors.

Catemaco Ayurveda Institute -Esoteric Teaching of the Vedas

Catemaco Sister City

Apparently unknown to most residents of Catemaco, Veracruz, the city of Catemaco has a sister city in Texas, namely South Padre Island.

Since no international organization lists this unique pairing, I suspect it was instigated by a local RV park operator from South Padre island who snuck in here to marry a local señorita.

Since Catemaco is land locked, and South Padre is an island, it would have made more sense to mate Catemaco's beach La Barra with that other beachtown. So I guess that's why we have not received any used fire trucks, junketing politicians or other treasures that US sisters frequently provide their impoverished hermanas.

South Padre Island - sister city of Catemaco

Sister Cities International

US Mexico Sister Cities

Catemaco as a second language

Language schools are a flourishing business in Mexico in two versions, teaching English and learning Spanish.

Beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz would be an ideal place for an SASL (Spanish as a second language) location. It is beautiful enough, (some even say magical) and has enough barely used hotel rooms and restaurants, and enough friendly people to victimize with broken Spanish language phrases.

Those seeking to learn Spanish should also be eagerly welcomed by those teaching English in Catemaco. I unfortunately met a "maestra" in charge of teaching English at a local high school, whose command of English was equivalent to my command of Croatian of which I know two words.

As for those wanting to learn Spanish, I know several graduates of two week immersion courses that have been able to say "taco" in Spanish. Now that may be different in some of the more advanced learning centers in Mexico, where degreed students actually learn how to say "enchilada".

The last Spanish language school in Catemaco folded a few years ago, possibly because the Austrian owner's students kept confusing strudels with tortillas.

This should be a wake up call to an enterprising English teacher, wanting to learn Spanish, and looking to spend the rest of his life in one of Mexico's most marvelous locations, contribute to the economy of a third world pueblo, and hopefully earn enough money to occasionally eat giant shrimp (mayacastes) in the foothills of the volcanoes of the Sierra Santa Marta.

Reference: The truth about ESL

Shocking Catemaco

Most small grocery stores, use an electric cooler as their cashier counter. Since they are usally fairly tall, Catemaco store owners try to hire tall people to man them, but often the person attending the counter is so short that only their nose reaches above the counter.

This happened to me today when leaning on a counter.

hey - I just got a shock
yes, I know.
Whaddayou mean you know?
I reported it to the one in charge.
Whaddayou mean the one in charge? You've been running this store for 3 years.
Yes, but it is not my problem.


Hey, Lady, don´t touch the pinche counter!
Please don´t insult my customers!

Catemaco paper towel holders

I introduced my Popoluca to paper towels.
Big mistake!

Now, everywhere I look, shelf surfaces are covered with paper towels.

Paper towels are almost unavailable in Catemaco. Until the invasion of Walmart/Aurrera and Soriana I made monthly trips to Veracruz to purchase humongous quantities of paper towels and toilet tissue that appeared to not disintegrate within sight of water.

Purchase opportunities near Catemaco have improved, and I now feel the soft touch of whatever on my butt, BUT I still cannot find one of those 1.99 dollar paper towel holders.

I realize I could easily make one with 3 pieces of wood, two nails, less than a pint of paint, concrete anchors, assorted screws and nails, etc.,
-- instead our "in use" roll of paper towels slumbers upon the massive knife holder I purchased at Sam's Club 5 years ago, which still has instruments that I or possibly a coroner would never use.

Obviously this a market niche that the Chinese have not yet exploited. Possibly one of the social benefit agencies in Mexico could declare a paper towel holiday, similar to other agriculturual festivities which have almost as much application, and provide everyone with free towel holders, and as usually forgetting that "it's between that counts."

Los Tuxtlas moving up in the world

With earth shattering speed the Mexican department store chain Coppel, mostly famous for selling shoes, has raised the first commercial elevator in San Andrés Tuxtla, surrounded by 3 floors of merchandise and a 12 car parking garage in place of a former old hotel in the city center.

Even faster was the arrival of the first international fast food chain "Italian Coffee Company", destroying a historic building on the central plaza, and filling mugs with lattes brewed with coffee from anywhere but Los Tuxtlas.

I am looking forward to the arrival of Taco Bell.

Catemaco - The longest small town bar in the world

The longest bar in the world seems to be a 208 meter monster in Rock island, Illinois, USA.

Runner up is the the agglomeration of almost 300 bars and pubs in the Altstadt of the town where I was raised, Düsseldorf, Germany.

I now waste away in Margaritaville, also known as beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz, Mexico. With a city population of less than 30,000 and an average daily income of about 3 Happy Meals from McDonald, the town boasts of almost 200 cantinas, bars, nightclubs, beer dispensories, etc.

Most of these bars are furnished by beer companies and the city dump, and I would estimate, the number of chairs used, could easily fill in parts of Laguna Catemaco to create a causeway to Isla Agaltepec to really get to know monkeys in their own habitat.

The Catemaco municipio government probably spends considerably more money on drunk disturbances than it receives from licensing fees, yet tolerates an almost daily increase in drinking places.

Go ahead, have a cold one on me!

Drunk in Catemaco

Below the belt of most Mexican rural towns, including beautiful Catemaco, Veracruz, dangles a pair of culture threatening problems, drunkenness and spouse abuse. The two are closely related to each other and form a basis for the extraordinarily high incidence of murders, mutilations and roadkills in the country.

At present federal Mexico does not tax alcohol, aside from the 15% tax added to most consumer products. The concept of sin taxes is not absent in Mexico. The booze manufacturers have just been able to excert their political prowess more than the tobacco companies which are heavily taxed.

Especially at night, the prevalence of public drunks is pernicious in most of downtown Catemaco, as well as many other communities, especially on the weekends and on the highways, despite the efforts of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) which is hyperactive here as well as in the rest of Mexico, providing 9 local refuges in this town of 20,000, and more than 22 in neighboring San Andrés Tuxtla.
Not helping is the cheap availability of rot gut "aguardiente" (firewater, distilled from sugarcane) at the equivalent of a short quart (26oz) of 72 proof liquor for 12 pesos. Even cheaper is the purchase of distilled alcohol from many grocery stores in any amount as long as you bring your own container. If you see a "wino" waving along the street clutching a plastic bag, containing what seems to be water, that will not be his goldfish, but a "churrito" or "boli" of brandless alcohol.
Firewater is the preferred choice of hard core drunks. The most problematic choice, though, is beer.
Mexico has a well deserved reputation for excellent beer quality and was able to fool the US public by exporting a third rate beer to the US market, where it rapidly cornered the "most imported " beer status and drove up the price of limes, Corona.

Corona and a few other breweries in the tightly controlled Mexican economy offer their most popular serving in "caguama" size bottles, (940ml, roughly a quart) for 14 pesos which compares to a similar bottle of Miller's "low life" for US 1.65 which is after the alleged 44% taxes which US alcohol consumes. Obviously Mexican drinkers are being ripped off by their compatriots controlling distribution channels.

The beer companies, aside from almost monopolistic Coca Cola, and Nestle are possibly the best marketers in Mexico and make it possible for any Jose or Juana to open a cantina on shoe strings, receiving free chairs, tables, refrigerators, decor and paint as long as they stick to selling one brewery's products.

The partial benefactors are the county governments (municipios) which charge a relatively high rate for liquor licenses, but not anywhere the huge sums that these licenses cost in the US.
The mayhem, roadkill and spouse abuse are additional benefits which are not included in the license fees and usually get picked up by state and federal funds.

The Mexican government, which is statistics happy, has made substantial studies of the drinking problem in urban areas, but seems to be avoiding the rural areas, where the problem is much more prevalent.

One final comment, which is not an endorsement, is to say that I have remarkably found those public drunks in Catemaco to be generally courteous and non-intrusive compared to many others I have encountered in my travels in other countries.
Cheers.