Catemaco Buses

A few months ago I made some notes on bus crashes in Mexico and this is how it began:

Fortunately no major bus crashes have occurred in or near Catemaco, Veracruz for several years. That is a wonderful record. Nevertheless bus crashes are daily occurrences in Mexico and are usually barely included in news broadcasts.

(67 died, 23 died, 7 died, etc.- these were mostly inter- village travelers or pilgrims, not worthy of mentioning by occurrence.) The number of bus traffic dead are substantially above the air plane dead of Mexico, but barely receive international mentions, possibly because major bus owners are political tyrannosaurs in Mexico.

Along with the rest of Central and South America, no exact statistics are available on the number of crashes or dead in any of these countries except for the occasional news blurbs in the major newspapers.

And, believe me, there are dozens of crashes every week! Anyone who ever had the chance to ride a third class bus in either Mexico or anywhere in the world will attest to the adrenaline flow incurred by travelling so called "chicken buses", called thus, because of the prevalence of livestock carried on the bus, and the suicidal attitudes of its drivers.

The major bus lines (first & second class) of Mexico have now placed a speed limit on their chauffeurs and created an almost safe sentiment of traveling across Mexico. Just remind the other unregulated bus driving fool traveling 75 miles per hour down the hill with 70 people aboard.

Wednesday night, 7 passengers died after their second class bus plunged off the bridge in Alvarado, 90 km north of Catemaco. That bridge has been a nightmare of construction for more than 3 years, with the only visible results being airconditioned toll collection booths. That bridge also controls beautiful downtown Catemaco's access to the north.

Do a Google search: "Google Search - bus crash mexico -"new mexico" and get a real appreciation for the number of passenger deaths on Mexican highways on this "Dia de Muertos".

Catemaco & Unesco

UNESCO recently added the Los Tuxtlas Biosphere to its 502 MAB (Man and Biosphere Programs) network of international protected reserves.

Although most ecologists in beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz consider this enrollment a long overdue acknowledgement of the precarious situation of the Tuxtlas fauna and flora, many others are flabbergasted.

Said one lumberjack from the village of Santa Marta, high up in the Sierra, ” ..they are cutting our lifeline! every tree I can chop down buys me a new tire for my pickup truck and some extras for my kids.” Added Captain Vandammed, a landlocked gringo retiree in Catemaco “Oh dear, I’m here for the carne del monte (hunted meat)! If they cut off my meat, I might as well move to Machu Pichu”.

Local ganaderos (cattlemen) are considering protest strikes to assert their rights to convert Los Tuxtlas into potreros (cattle ranches), while hotel operators worry that someone might actually build a competitive functional eco-resort on one of the hauntingly beautiful volcanoes of Los Tuxtlas.

One of the local presidentes (mayors) was heard to mumble ” I have enough problems trying to declare Catemaco a pueblo magico, now they have to throw the whole Tuxtlas at me?”

Meanwhile the local gravel pit operators headed by Repechaje Quirino are desperately seeking to buy unaffected lands to continue flattening the Tuxtlas landscape while maintaining the Los Tuxtlas construction boom. And a former Catemaco president, now heading a road building agency, remarked “We will not succumb to this foreign usurpation of Los Tuxtlas! All our wonderful projects to provide the area with functional roads will be discontinued!”

Meanwhile concerned people both in Mexico and the world breathlessly await the outcome of this political infighting now apparently so common in this impoverished country, (except of course, the rich enclaves on par with French suburbs).

Catemaco's El Huerto Ecoclub

El Huerto Ecoclub is the forerunner of the ecotourism bus tours from Mexico City to communities on the Santa Marta slopes in Catemaco, Veracruz.

This is a private venture devoted to environmental education, occupying several acres on Laguna Catemaco, about a mile south from the city. It specializes in annually hauling hundreds of “poor little rich kids” from the upper classes in Mexico to Catemaco and teaches them to sail and to appreciate their environment. Although occupying beautiful grounds with facilities which would shame most Catemaco hotels, the club is intensely private and rejects any local involvement. Management is paranoid about neighbors taking photos, so here are 150 photos taken by a kid attending the ecoclub.

Supposedly owned by a French expatriate former sailing champion, the club also owns a temascal installation near the Catemaco Hospital, and also provides organized tours to other parts of Mexico and Europe.

Aside from possibly purchasing perishables in Catemaco, the club has no effect on Catemaco, and most locals hardly know about it, except for the small colorful sails occasionally cheering up Laguna Catemaco.

More photos & references: catemaco.info - Group Tourism

Catemaco Days of the Dead

The Days of the Dead (Dia de los muertos), November 1 & 2, are again creeping upon beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz. And as usual, local newspapers lament the conditions of their community graveyards.

The Day of the Dead is a unique Mexican holiday combining aspects of Halloween (All Saints Day) and Thanksgiving. Its origins may be in observations of the Aztec “Lady of the the Dead (Miccailhuitontli), or simply a celebration of when everyone knows the weather seasons change in Mexico.

The holiday, (two of them, neither one is legal), is particularly popular in Southern Mexico, and provides countless tourists with photos in Oaxaca.

Broadly, the holiday consist of families welcoming their dead back into their homes with small altars decorated with photos of the dead and religious bricabrac, visiting and decorating the graves of their close kin, and having a smorgasbord for living family members related to or acquainted with the dead ones.

Dozens of flower sellers usually clutter the streets leading to a cemetery, and their flowers and the above ground sepulchres popular in Mexico, create some great photo opportunities.

Bakeries go ballistic on this holiday and create various shapes of breads for the living, including “Pan de Muerto”, bread stuffed with representative figures of the dead, “El Muñeco”, bread shaped like a corpse, and “La Cara”, a confection topped with fruits. All of these breads are outrageously delicious and contribute to the obesity epidemic in Mexico and among resident gringos.

After the holidays, the graveyards are usually ill maintained, mosquito infested junk yards, devoid of most respect for neither the dead nor the living.

Catemaco Birds

Not a day passes without someone quoting that beautiful downtown Catemaco and Los Tuxtlas, Veracruz have 500 plus some bird species , including sea birds, migratory birds, birds that were blown in by a wind, birds that noone has seen for 100 years, and others.

The recent NAOC (4th North American Ornithological Conference) in Veracruz produced a lot of Mexican and US birders visiting Catemaco. I found them in Montepio, Playa Azul and the roads above Coyame.

Here is a list of birds that have magically disappeared in Los Tuxtlas and Catemaco, the pueblo magico.
tuxlas.com - Extinct, Rare & Endangered Species in Veracruz, Mexico

Catemaco Cut and Dice

Cesarean sections instead of natural birth are a gift for women fearful of pain, late for an appointment, concerned about fatty tissue, or actually having a health problem requiring this surgical intervention.

The procedure is also alleged to increase complications in both mother and baby, and additionally to create havoc with financial planning among the parents, especially among the lower economic stratum of society of which most of Catemaco consists.

In beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz, I recently counted three cesarean sections. (Big deal! These were the only pregnant women I knew in Catemaco. So I studied the subject a little.)

It turns out that Mexico has a 34% cesarian rate, well above the 29% US rate, and substantially below the 50% rate in South Korea. Mexican private hospitals are way above the 50% rate of cesarean versus vaginal deliveries.

So I asked my intern doctor, daughter of my resident Popoluca. Yes, most cesareans are performed not because of necessity. Yes, people pay bribes to have the operation performed. Yes, many gynecologists prefer to perform cesareans to not interfer with their social life when attending interminable labor pains.

A cesarean birth delivery is indicated if either the baby or the mother’s health are in danger. The UN (United Nations) maximizes the percentage of live births subject to cesarean intervention to 15% as the probable percentage of needed intervention.

Unfortunately no exact long term studies have been done on the differences between cesarean and natural births. Folklore heavily leans to the natural birth side, so the use of cesarean methods, at present, seems to be a judgment call.

As far as an impoverished country like Mexico, and especially its provinces, cesarean operations are a heavy duty consumer of available health resources. In that impoverished environment, cesarean births cost Mexico millions of pesos more than natural births.

Those three babies in Catemaco are doing great. One paid 1,600 subsidized pesos at the Catemaco Hospital, another paid 6,000 pesos at the Mexfam clinic, the third paid 10,000 pesos at a private sanatorium.

That is still a lot cheaper than liposuction.