Born in the coastal state of Guerrero, his family moved to the Bondojito area of Mexico City in 1947. It was a time when thousands of Mexicans were leaving the countryside, and the slum areas around the city were expanding faster than the government could provide adequate housing or services. Olivares became a tough boy on tough streets. Siblings died, his father left to find work in the U.S. and he was thrown out of school for fighting. According to boxing folklore, the headmaster once offered to present his graduation diploma early, on the condition that Olivares never come back to the school.

How Rubén Olivares began his boxing career

He tried his hand at carving wooden figures, a career for which he had little talent. Then, he and a friend decided the one thing they could do was fight, so they walked down to the local gym. Many boxers start as amateurs for fitness, or to toughen up, and then find they are good enough to turn professional. The day Olivares first entered the gym, he already had a professional career in mind.

He built up a reasonable record in the amateurs, including a Mexico City Golden Gloves title. But having missed his chance to compete in the 1964 Olympics, he saw no point in continuing to fight for free. At just 17 years of age, he had his first professional fight, beating Isidro Sotelo in Cuernavaca. It was the first of 24 consecutive knockout wins. Apart from his winning record, Olivares had that special star quality. While many boxers wear out their opponent, slowly mastering them until you sense a knockout is coming, from the moment Rubén stepped into the ring, you knew a knockout punch could come at any moment. Whatever else might happen, fans were not going to get a dull fight. 

With money coming in from fights, Olivares did not slow down when he left the ring. He was noted for his love of tequila and women. However, this lifestyle only made his fans love him more. As the wins accumulated, Ruben started to get attention beyond Mexico. The Los Angeles Times once described him as having “a smile that stretched from ear to ear and thunder in both hands.”

The man with thunder in both hands

Another young Mexican bantamweight catching headlines at this time was Chucho Castillo. He was noted for his quiet, almost shy approach to life, working ruthlessly in the gym but then quietly slipping away. He was one hell of a boxer and in December 1968 traveled to Inglewood, California, to fight World Champion Lionel Rose. The 10th round saw Rose knocked to the canvas, a moment that convinced the many Mexicans in the audience that their man had done enough to win the title. However, when at the end of 15 rounds, the referee raised the Australian’s arm in victory. There was first surprise and then anger. The riot that followed put 14 fans and the referee in the hospital. Five months later, Olivares came to Inglewood, where he beat Olympic champion Takao Sakurai of Japan in a title elimination bout. 

He was now set to meet Rose for the world title, which would once again be fought in California. The first round was even as the two men sized each other up. This was followed by an action-packed second that started with the fighters exchanging blows. Slowly but steadily, the brawl turned in the Mexican’s favor, and close to the bell, Rose was knocked to the canvas. The Australian got to his feet and fought on, but from this point it was a case of not who would win, but how long Rose could last. It ended in the fifth, Olivares becoming world champion at the age of 22.

The trilogy of fights with Chucho Castillo

All of Mexico now wanted to see Olivares fight Castillo. The former delayed the showdown by taking a few easy fights, but in April 1970, the two Mexicans stepped into the Inglewood ring for what would be the first of three fights that would define their careers. Olivares won the first clash on points, but it was close enough to justify a return. This time, he received a badly cut eye in the first round, a wound he claimed was from a clash of heads, something the Castillo camp denied. The referee kept checking the cut and finally stopped the fight in the 14th. It was Olivares’ first defeat in five years and 63 fights.

It is possible that by then, he was already in decline. Olivares notoriously hated training, and one reason his management team kept him fighting so regularly was to keep him occupied and away from parties. Not that the management had to push him into the ring. The money Olivares got from each contest quickly disappeared, lost in rip-offs, taxes, bad investments, and gifts to his relatives and friends back in the barrio. His bank balance always needed one more fight.

The end of Olivares’ career

By now, he was no longer putting the same effort into the gym work, while his party lifestyle meant he was increasingly struggling to make the weight limit. Yet Olivares was so talented and so proud in the ring that at first the decline didn’t show. In April 1971, he fought Castillo for the third time, surviving an early knockdown to win on points. He seemed back on form and won his next six fights. However, those around him were increasingly worried about his attitude and his playboy lifestyle. In March 1972, he met Rafael Herrera. It was a fight neither man wanted. Olivares was out of shape, and Herrera had been sick. When Herrera later won with an eighth-round knockout, Olivares was still surprisingly upbeat.  He had not, he announced, lost the bantamweight title, but had started his pursuit of the featherweight title. 

However, his life was growing increasingly wild. There is a story that while he was preparing for one fight, he and his opponent passed each other in the street. His rival was going out for an early training run just as Olivares was coming in from a disco. It was also at this point that the boxer started to get into movies, starring in “Nosotros Los Feos” and getting numerous other smaller parts. Despite all the distractions, Olivares won three more world titles. He beat Bobby Chacon for the NABF featherweight title in 1973, Zensuke Utagawa for the WBA featherweight title in 1974, and Chacon again for the WBC featherweight title in 1975. He finally left the ring in 1981, having lost three and drawn two of his last five fights.

Life after boxing

His life since then has had its ups and downs. On the downside, there was a marijuana-related arrest. In contrast, there was his induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. There were some television roles, but financially, his post-boxing career brought tough times. In his later years, Olivares was a regular in the Mexico City mercado, selling boxing memorabilia and autographs. There are children and grandchildren, and at 74, he is still active, still has that captivating smile, and still has the respect of the people who recognise him in the street.

Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.

The post Who was the greatest Mexican boxer of all time? appeared first on Mexico News Daily

No match during this golden era created as much anticipation as the so-called “Battle of the Z Boys,” the 1977 confrontation between Mexican boxing champions Carlos Zárate and Alfonso Zamora. 

Both men came into the fight with world titles — Zárate the WBC title, and Zamora the WBA. Both were undefeated, and both were knockout specialists, who between them stopped 73 of their 74 opponents. So the scene was set for a dramatic showdown.

Friends and boxing stablemates

Zárate and Zamora shared some similarities beyond their raw talent. Both had been born in tough areas of Mexico City: Zárate, the older by close to three years, had been raised in the barrio of Tepito, where fighting and getting in trouble was part of life. Zamora also got into street brawls and had all the other problems of a young boy living on mean streets. Zamora’s father took him to the local gym, where the boy did odd chores and pounded the bag after everybody had left. The coach noticed and started Zamora on his amateur career.  

Both men also came through the amateur ranks with distinction: Zárate was a Mexican Golden Gloves champion in 1969 and ended his amateur career with a record of 33 wins and 3 losses. Thirty of his fights had been won by knockouts. Zamora stayed in the amateur ranks until 1972 and was rewarded with an Olympic silver medal at the Munich games. By then, Zárate had won his first 14 professional fights. 

At the start of their careers, both men were managed by Arturo “Cuyo” Hernández, which was hardly surprising, for this was an era when any Mexican boxer with world potential wanted to be in the Hernández stable; he was the forger of Mexican boxing’s world champions, the creator of its bantamweight golden age.

Hernández had been an average fighter, but as a manager he was unequaled. His knowledge, his temper tantrums and his ability to close a deal had guided three of Mexico’s greatest boxers  — Rodolfo “Chango” Casanova, José “Toluco” López, and Rubén “Púas” Olivares — to world titles. He had an eye for talent, the vision and the ruthlessness to bring out the best of the young fighters he spotted. 

Similar paths, different profiles

While their careers had followed similar paths, Zárate and Zamora were miles apart in appearance. Zárate stood 1.73 meters (5 feet 8 inches) and had the chiseled build of an athlete. Zamora was shorter at 1.63 meters (5 feet 4 inches), and his power came from a stockiness rather than a bodybuilder’s physique; his strength wasn’t notable until you saw him in action in the ring.

Zamora made his professional debut in April 1973, with a second-round-knockout win over Luis Castañeda. Over the next 13 months, he won 15 fights, all by knockouts, with only one opponent making it past the third round.

This pushed the young Olympic medalist rapidly up the world rankings, and on March 14, 1975, Zamora won the WBA bantamweight title by knockout, defeating Korean Hong Soo-hwan soon after Zamora had celebrated his 21st birthday. He would defend his title five more times before the fight with Zárate, according to a 1976 Sports Illustrated article about the desire among boxing fans to see the two Mexican champions face off in the ring.

On May 8, 1976, Zárate became the WBC world bantamweight champion, knocking out defending champ Rodolfo Martínez in the ninth round. By February 1977, Zárate had made his third successful title defense, stopping Filipino Fernando Cabanela in the third round.

Unsurprisingly, by late 1976, discussions of a showdown between the two Mexican boxing champions were picking up momentum. 

A Mexican matchup at Inglewood 

Both Zárate and Zamora had won their titles in Los Angeles, at the “Fabulous” Forum stadium in Inglewood, the center of L.A.’s boxing scene, which was one of the world’s most active. L.A. had a significant Hispanic population, so Mexican fighters were always popular there.

The biggest fights also drew fans from across the Mexico-U.S. border. They bought tickets in Tijuana or Mexicali, which gave them trouble-free 72-hour U.S. visas. So there was plenty of excitement in both the U.S. and Mexico at the announcement that the two Mexican bantamweight titleholders would face off at Inglewood.

Surprisingly, however, although the group of businessmen brokering the matchup had promised each competitor a US $125,000 purse, it would not be a title fight. The usual explanation given for this is that neither boxing organization was willing to lose one of their biggest champions. However, unification fights were big business, more courted than avoided, so boxing politics might have been involved.

But we have to wonder if there was concern about one or the other fighter making the weight limit. This nontitle showdown was agreed to with the required weight being at just one pound over the normal bantamweight limit. 

Yet, nothing took away from the excitement this matchup provoked. The two managerial teams carried on a war of words in the lead-up to the fight, which was enthusiastically amplified by the Latin American sports media, helping to sell 13,966 tickets. The fighters themselves remained above the nonsense and remained friends in their later lives. 

A 4-round disaster

The first round started with Zamora the more aggressive competitor, but Zárate took one of his best punches and stayed steady. Still, Zamora looked dangerous with his counterpunches. With both men known as knockout kings, there was doubt the bout would last long.

“What are the odds of this going the full rounds?” the match’s American commentator asked rhetorically. “You may want 100 to one.”  

Zamora started the fight looking for that one winning punch. This might have been confidence, instinct or the fear that Zárate would outlast him if the fight went beyond three or four rounds. Zamora was only 22, but he had already fought 30 professional fights in his lifetime. He later suggested he was not at his best for this fight and might well have been tiring of the routine of daily training.

The fight started out seemingly evenly matched, but by the fourth round, Zamora was no longer able to compensate for Zárate’s superior height and reach.

The second round saw Zárate holding the center of the ring, and while Zamora was throwing out punches, he was not dancing around so much. With a minute to go, Zárate landed a powerful left to Zamora’s chin. The taller man had clearly won the round. 

By the third round, as Zamora started to tire, Zárate’s height, reach and boxing skills were putting him in control. The one time Zamora did connect, Zárate brushed it off. By the end of the round, Zamora was knocked to the floor for the first time in the fight. Zamora later recalled that he thought he’d done well for three rounds, after which he didn’t remember much.

Certainly, the fourth round was a disaster for him: Zárate was now the more aggressive, and he dropped Zamora twice, at which point Alfonzo Zamora, Sr. threw in the towel. The white cloth landed over his son’s face, and while that was probably an accident rather than a sign of disrespect, the father was not showing much compassion. With barely a glance at his son lying on the canvas, he strolled across the ring and started a fight with Cuyo Hernández.

Life after the ‘battle’

After this fight, Zamora was never the same fighter. He lost his title in his next fight against Jorge Luján, lost three of his next seven matches and walked away from boxing when he was just 26. 

Zárate, in contrast, was at the top of his game for a few years, a man Ring Magazine later summarised as “handsome and well-mannered” and blessed with what the magazine called “his extraordinary punching power that was the soul of his fantastic mystic.”

Zárate won his next five title defense matches — all for big purses — which brought him the good life, including a yacht, an Acapulco apartment and cars. But when he tried moving up a weight category to fight super bantamweight Wilfredo Gómez, Zárate suffered his first defeat.

Coming down with the flu as he arrived in Puerto Rico for the match, Zárate’s team fed him orange juice, but that caused him to put on weight; Zárate had to take saunas and dehydrate himself to make the weight limit. This was probably the one time in his career that Zárate didn’t want to fight, and he was not happy with his manager’s determination to put him into the ring. 

After the Gómez fight, Zárate dropped back to bantamweight, and there were two more wins before, in 1979, he stepped into the ring at Caesar’s Palace to face former training partner, Lupe Pintor. Pintor had been fighting well leading up to the fight, but this still looked to be a match well within Zárate’s capabilities. Surprisingly, they went the full distance, with even Pintor looking shocked when the referee raised his arm as the winner.

Like many fighters, Zárate found retirement difficult, made harder by financial problems. After a five-year break, he returned to the ring and had 12 wins in a row, but once he came up against the big names — Jeff Fenech and  Daniel Zaragoza — for world title fights, it was clear that age had caught up with him.

There were then problems with drugs, from which the champion finally emerged, thanks to family and religion. He recovered, watched his son and nephew box, and in 1994 was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. 

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of Zamora and Zárate’s great fight, which will no doubt bring on a flood of nostalgia for an age when Mexican boxers were the world’s best fighters.

The post Tales from Mexico’s golden era of boxing: 1977’s ‘Battle of the Z Boys’ appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Spain’s colonization of the East Indies transformed the relationship between Europe and Asia. For 1,600 years, Europeans desiring Asian goods could only purchase commodities that passed from merchant to merchant along 6,000 kilometers of the Silk Road, a trade network that linked China to Southern Europe and North Africa. This path closed in 1453, after the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople, making Europe’s ongoing search for a sea link to Asia more urgent than ever.

It wasn’t until 1498 that Vasco de Gama successfully circumnavigated Africa, allowing European merchants to reach the markets of Asia by sea. Spain was largely cut out of a route dominated by Holland and Portugal, but in 1513 the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and sighted the Pacific Ocean. After 20 years, Columbus’s dream of a westward route to Asia was alive once again. 

East-to-west travel was made possible by the trade winds, and 1565 saw a small Spanish settlement established in the Philippines by a conquering force that had set out from Mexico. Discovering a route back to Mexico proved more difficult, but by sailing north as far as the 38th parallel, Basque sailor Andrés de Urdaneta picked up favourable winds and currents and sailed into Acapulco with a small cargo of cinnamon. This was a poor return for such a long and dangerous trip, and the Spanish colony in the Philippines remained improvised, isolated and in danger of abandonment. 

This changed in the early 1570s when the Spaniards in the Philippines, now relocated to Manila, were able to purchase the contents of a few Chinese junks, allowing them to send a consignment of porcelain and silk to Mexico. In 1574, six junks are recorded as sailing into Manila and each year a growing number of ships from Japan and China filled the Manila warehouses with luxury items including silk, porcelain, beeswax, mirrors, gold and Persian rugs. What drove the trade was the Chinese losing faith in their paper money and seeking the security of silver. Spanish silver could double in value when shipped across the Pacific, and their American colonies had the biggest mines in the world.

The port of Acapulco was selected as the American terminus for the Manila trade. It was relatively close to Mexico City, and there was little fault to find in a harbor that was safe from storms and so deep that on occasions a ship might tie up to trees rather than drop an anchor. The problem was not the harbor, but the town. Simón de Anda, an 18th-century governor of the Philippines, complained of Acapulco’s “heat and its venomous serpents, and the constant trembling of the earth. “All the treasures of this world could not compensate for the necessity of living there or of traveling the road between Acapulco and Mexico,” he wrote. 

The new trade with Asia changed everything. Each year, great galleons known as Nao de China or Nao de Acapulco — the China ship or Acapulco ship — left Manila loaded with all the wealth of Asia. By the 16th century, these galleons were the biggest ships in the world, weighing up to 2,000 tons. Most were built in the Philippines, making use of tropical hardwoods. Even so, there was little room for comfort on a tightly packed ship. Supplies usually ran low mid-passage, forcing the ship’s crews — generally Filipino sailors and Spanish officers — to survive on hard biscuits, rainwater and any fish they could catch. The poor diet inevitably led to scurvy and lack of hygiene was liable to cause an outbreak of other diseases. 

While the goods ships carried were varied, it was tightly bound bundles of silk that made up the core of the trade. Asian silk was considered superior to European cloth, particularly as it was easier to dye, and the market was expansive. Silk was used for everything from an official’s expensive cloak to the simple headscarves women wore when leaving the house.

Dates for sailing were set by Spain but ultimately subject to winds and the storm season. The trip from the Philippines to Acapulco, with its long northern circuit, might take six months, and the ships were under command to depart Manila by the end of June. If all went well, they would reach Acapulco around December.

On the return trip, they were expected to depart from Mexico no later than the end of March and travel via Guam, where the galleons were the main link to this smaller colony. This was the more direct and shorter journey and ships hoped to reach the Philippines before the typhoon season started in May. These galleons were the largest and best-armed ships in the Pacific and sailed without escort. It was not only their size and cannon which protected them, but the vastness of the ocean. The real danger from pirates would be at the start and the end of each trip, and it was not unknown for an escort to be sent out as they approached land.

In Acapulco, as the expected date for the arrival of the galleon approached, the population of the port would grow from 4,000 or so poor residents to 12,000 merchants, laborers and hawkers from around the world; a cosmopolitan community of Indians, Spaniards, Chinese, Peruvians, and Filipinos. There might even be a few Africans who had been brought to Asia on Portuguese ships calling in at Mozambique. However, once the fair was over, anybody who could leave did so. As a result, while Acapulco was the center of a trade route that rivalled the wealth of Genoa and Venice, there was little investment in the town. There was a church, and the San Diego fort was completed in 1617. A few more solid buildings served as the headquarters of the treasury, and a row of three-story houses appear to have belonged to merchants.

However, it is difficult to build up a history of the settlement from the few surviving sketches, as buildings that appear in one print have disappeared a century later. All the artists were keen to show the harbor busy with galleons and small craft, a reminder that Acapulco was an important Pacific harbor, not totally reliant on the one yearly arrival. However, there is also a likelihood that artists used their imagination to portray the town, and its commerce, a little grander than it was. 

God willing, this year’s galleon would be spotted by small ships sailing off the Mexican coast, and news of its approach would be rushed to Mexico City and Acapulco. As the ship entered harbor, there was a cannon salute between ship and castle, and officials would come aboard to check the cargo. Goods were all tightly sealed, both against the damp and to cram as much as possible into every available space. Opening these tightly packed bundles would both be time-consuming and risk exposing valuable goods to the weather, so the paperwork issued in Manila was traditionally accepted.

On the rare occasions when a diligent official demanded a more rigorous inspection, it would bring complaints and protests from merchants and the town’s officials. The report was rushed to Mexico City for approval and for the taxes to be allocated. Only when permission arrived from Mexico City could the goods be loaded onto lighters, placed on the beach, and from there divided between the warehouses. Passengers could now disembark and head for the hospital or the church. The ship was inspected for any concealed goods, then brought to the shipyard to be prepared for the return journey, perhaps only ten weeks away.

The Acapulco fair was dominated by agents representing the big wholesalers in Mexico City and Puebla, men responsible for millions of pesos who dealt directly with the Manila traders and expected to have some control over this year’s prices. These important middlemen were aware that there was a strict window for the Manila merchants to start the return journey, and the closer they came to the departure date, the more anxious they would be to finalize a deal. One trick was to delay the start of the fair as long as possible, demanding the opening coincide with one of the upcoming religious festivals. During the early years of the fair there was a powerful third force, with the traders from Peru, rich with coins from the world’s biggest silver mines and always likely to undercut their Mexico City rivals.

If the big wholesale transactions were the main event, there was no lack of action around the fringes of the market. Officers from the galleon were allowed to bring a quality of goods ashore and seek their own buyers. Some goods made their way ashore by more dubious ways, for while the bureaucracy was multi-layered, the enforcement of the rules was lax. Indeed, it sometimes seems the whole system was designed to encourage smuggling. Indeed, anybody appointed to one of the official positions in the system, expected to become rich, far beyond the means of their paltry salaries.

There were other sources of business too. The ship needed to be stocked with supplies for the return journey, and with Acapulco having limited farmland, nearby haciendas carried their produce down to the town. Then there were the crew with wages to spend, hundreds of porters, the mule drivers and the dockyard workers, all requiring food and entertainment. Those just arrived, mixed with those gathering for the return trip, priests for the increasingly passionate drive to convert Filipinos to Christianity, soldiers, officials, merchants and prisoners being sent into exile. There would have been transactions going on in every tavern and dark corner. 

The wealth created by the galleon trade became so expansive, there were fears it might swamp the Spanish economy, draining silver reserves and endangering Spain’s home-grown textile industry. Atlantic merchants, who linked America with Europe, complained that their own trade was being adversely affected by the number of merchants abandoning the eastern port of Vera Cruz for booming Acapulco. From around 1593, Spain struggled to impose some control over the trade. This was largely achieved by decreeing the amount of silver that could be exported each year, as well as restricting transportation to that one single vessel.

No goods could leave Acapulco until the fair closed, but then the caravans of mules would climb into the mountains to start the trek to Mexico City, while the Peruvian ships would sail for home. Some of the goods sold in Mexico City — items that might have originated in Japan or Persia — would be taken to Vera Cruz for shipment to Spain. For three centuries, Acapulco sat at the center of a global trade route. By the late 1700s, the galleon trade was in decline. The easterly route to Asia, via Africa, was opening up to all nations, while so much silver had crossed the Pacific that Asia was losing its desire for the metal. 

Three centuries of trading turned Acapulco into a sizable town, and Manila into a great city. The Nao de China also linked New Spain and the Philippines profoundly in a way that persists in the present day. Asian porcelain and silks influenced the style of Central American ceramics and textiles and Filipino sailors may have helped invent tequila, while Tagalog uses dozens of Nahuatl words. The importance of the Manila-Acapulco trade route was acknowledged in 2009, when UNESCO proclaimed October 8 as Galleon Day. A Galleon Museum, with a full-scale replica of a Spanish galleon, is under construction in Manila as the Philippines and Mexico work towards gaining UNESCO World Heritage status for the old trade route.

The post When Acapulco was the center of the world appeared first on Mexico News Daily

The shark attack, when it happens, is subtly filmed: There is no blood, no close-up of mutilated limbs. We hear muffled screams and see the woman being pulled underwater. Her drunken friend wakes on the beach in the morning to find her missing, and movies will never be the same again.

When Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” was first released in 1975, it dramatically increased the public’s fear of sharks.

“Jaws,” when it was released 50 years ago, propelled Steven Spielberg to fame and marked the start of the summer blockbuster. From this point onwards, studios would be on the lookout for the next cultural phenomenon, a motion picture with a big budget and a star-studded cast that would bring in the crowds during the summer holiday season. “Star Wars,” “Alien,” ”Indiana Jones” and “Ghostbusters” all followed the path established by “Jaws.”  

If “Jaws” revived the movie industry, it probably did little for scuba tourism. Despite widespread societal fear of them, shark attacks are extremely rare. Incidents can be classified into two types.

The first is the phenomenon of unprovoked bites, in which an attack occurs in the shark’s natural habitat with no human provocation. Swimmers, waders and surfers are the most common targets.

The second, a provoked bite, takes place when there a human interacts with a shark. This might include spearfishers, people attempting to feed or touch sharks or those trying to remove a captured shark from nets.

While most sharks can bite if provoked, three species account for the vast majority of unprovoked attacks: the bull shark, the tiger shark and, of course, the great white.

In 2024, there were 47 shark attacks reported around the world, with four fatalities. To put that into perspective, around 81,410 to 137,880 people die each year from snake bites, while 24,000 die from lightning strikes.

Mexico has a long coastline, and sharks can be found in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. However, no attacks were recorded in Mexico during 2024, and the last five years have seen just eight recorded attacks. Surprisingly, four of these were fatal, a high ratio of deaths to attacks that might suggest fishermen who receive some relatively minor injury do not report the bites.

Humans are far more deadly to sharks than sharks are to humans. According to a low estimate, 73 million sharks are taken from the seas every year, and the last decade has seen Mexico increase its share of this international trade. According to the National Aquaculture and Fishing Commission’s (Conapesca) Fisheries Statistical Yearbook, Mexico is now ranked sixth in terms of the total catch of sharks, with an annual catch of 20,000 to 40,000 tons per year.

A fisherman in Mexico receives around US $2 per kilogram of shark, but by the time the dried fins reach Asia, they can be worth up to $70. This market has resulted in several shark species in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean being fished to the point where they are now described as being “exploited to the maximum sustainability.”  

While the shark trade is regulated in Mexico, there are ways around any rule. Some fishing boats operate without permits or boats might creep out during the closed season, and protected species are still being caught. Add this to poor recordkeeping and corruption, and it is reasonable to assume that at least some of the shark that passes from Mexico to Asian markets is off the books.

While the situation in Mexico is uncertain, studies have shown that more than 70% of the fins that end up in Hong Kong fish markets come from vulnerable or endangered species. There is also a terrible level of animal cruelty in shark fishing. It is primarily a shark’s fin that is valuable, so it has become a common practice for fishermen to cut these from a living shark and then throw the animal back into the water, where the sharks, unable to swim, will slowly drown.

One hope for sharks is that humans are fascinated by them; each year, world shark tourism generates more than US $300 million. While any diver going into warm water might be lucky enough to spot these wonderful animals, there are a handful of Mexican dive sites famous for shark spotting. Playa del Carmen offers a variety of diving tours that focus on viewing the bull sharks that gather here from November to March.

Bull sharks are large sharks responsible for many attacks on humans. However, this is largely because they share the shallow waters where humans like to splash around, and they are not considered a threat to divers. Indeed, Playa del Carmen is famous for the opportunity of seeing these ocean giants swim past at close range.

Another hot spot for shark encounters in Mexico is Cabo Pulmo, on the southeast coast of the Baja California Peninsula. This reef is around 20,000 years old, and after many years of overfishing became protected in 1995. It is now one of the most successful marine parks in the world, with over 6,000 species recorded. Sharks can be seen here in large numbers in winter, and there are many other attractions, from whales to the seasonal gathering of Mobula Rays.

Mexico’s third famous shark site is currently closed to tourists. This is Isla Guadalupe, 240 kilometers from the western coast of the Baja Peninsula. Declared a Biosphere Reserve in 2005, it offers clear, calm waters and great views of the white sharks that gather here from July to December.  The start of shark season is marked by the arrival of juvenile male sharks. As the weeks roll by, these juveniles are joined by mature female sharks, some of which measure over five meters. 

Until recently, Guadalupe Island was a noted destination for cage diving. This concept was pioneered in Australia in the 1970s by Rodney Fox. Having survived a shark attack, Fox developed the idea of putting divers into a cage and letting great whites come to them. 

The idea was copied in South Africa and here in Mexico, but has always been controversial. The main problem with cage diving is that in many places, sharks need to be attracted by throwing chum — fresh chunks of fish meat with bone and blood — into the water. This puts excessive nutrients into the sea. Detractors say the easily available food source changes the sharks’ migratory habits.

Cage diving off Isla Guadalupe made headlines for the wrong reason in 2016, when a young shark managed to force its way into a cage. The trapped diver escaped injury, but the incident was filmed and widely shared, with 8 million views on YouTube.

Despite this incident, Guadalupe cage diving had a good reputation within the industry. The water was clear, the sharks gathered here naturally and although some bait was used, this was not chum but fish heads. At one point, three companies were operating small but profitable businesses. 

So it came as a surprise when cage diving was suspended in 2022 and all tourism on the island stopped in January 2023. While the explanation that the closure was intended to “make it possible to gather information that will guide activities and the adoption of the best sustainability practices that guarantee the conservation of the aforementioned populations” sounded commendable, it also posed questions.

The suddenness of the decision left small tour operators unable to refund deposits, and the ruling did not seem to be part of any greater conservation plan. There was also a concern that removing the licensed dive boats, which acted as watchdogs, would leave the waters deserted and open to the poachers.

Sharks are great survivors. Over the last 500 million years, they have lived through five mass extinction events that have decimated other species. However, 50 years after Police Chief Brody hunted down the monster in “Jaws,” sharks might be facing their greatest challenge. 

The post The state of Mexico’s sharks, 50 years after ‘Jaws’ appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Forty years ago, American geologist Walter Alvarez was drawn to Stevns Klint by a strange geological feature: a dark, unbroken line, about 10 centimeters in width, running through the cliffs. This line is known as fish clay, and while not unique to this site, there is nowhere else on the planet where the feature is so clear and dramatic.

A mysterious line in the fossil record

Fish clay appears just above the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, a mysterious point in the geological record approximately 66 million years ago when three-quarters of life on Earth disappears. In the 1980s, it was believed that, although dramatic, this mass extinction would have occurred gradually, and there were numerous proposed causes for it, ranging from disease to climate change to a period of violent volcanic action.

If, however, as Walter Alvarez believed, the change in the fossil record was linked to this mysterious black line, that would leave two likely possibilities for the extinction: Volcanic activity remained a suspect, but Alvarez felt an asteroid strike offered a better explanation. There was a relatively easy way to find out, and an analysis of the fish clay brought an exciting result. The clay was extremely rich in iridium, an element that is exceedingly rare on Earth but abundant in asteroids and comets. The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, Alvarez concluded, must have been caused by an asteroid striking Earth.

In 1980, Science magazine published Alvarez’s paper, “Extraterrestrial cause of the cretaceous-tertiary extinction.” While not proving decisively that the mysterious line in the fossil record was evidence of an asteroid strike or that this strike had been the cause of the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, it opened this possibility up to more serious scientific discussion.

Since the 1960s, scientists had understood the significance of shocked quartz in identifying meteorite impact sites. Put simply, shocked quartz has undergone intense pressure, changing the rock inside. This change does not occur during volcanic action and was first observed in the aftermath of nuclear explosions. In follow-up work to his 1980 paper, Alvarez found shocked quartz crystals and other telltale signs linking the Stevns Klint fish clay to an asteroid impact.

Then, in the late 1980s, researchers in Texas published a study of a giant tsunami around the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary event. While this could have been the result of an earthquake, the scale of the event pointed to something more violent. The mystery fish clay that Walter Alvarez had studied in Italy and Denmark was also found in New Zealand and the North Pacific, suggesting that whatever event produced it had been truly global.

Hunting for a crater

The argument was slowly moving toward an asteroid strike, but many scientists would not be convinced until the impact site could be identified. This was proving difficult: Earth’s atmosphere protects us from many smaller objects, while any craters that do form are usually worn away by the climate and covered over by flora. It is usually only in desert areas that craters remain relatively untouched, and a crater, even one big enough to cover the entire earth in dust, might not be easy to find after 66 million years.

Ironically, the crater had already been located. It was just that nobody had taken any notice.

In the late 1970s, American geophysicist Glen Penfield was employed by Pemex, searching for promising oil drilling sites in the Gulf of Mexico. His team’s aerial survey identified a mysterious half-circle of magnetic disturbance, half on land — where it seemed to center on the Yucatán village of Chicxulub — and half under the sea, 120 miles in diameter. 

This strange feature had already been noted but was marked on geological maps as an ancient volcano. Penfield, who had studied volcanoes at university, felt that was unlikely: He believed that the ring was an impact crater. His colleague, Yucatecan geophysicist Antonio Camargo, agreed. To their frustration, however, the core samples that Pemex had collected from the region over the years — which might contain the geological evidence to both confirm his asteroid theory and put a date to it —had been lost in a storage fire. 

Despite the lack of a smoking gun to prove their hypothesis, Penfield and Camargo went ahead and presented their findings at the 1981 Society of Exploration Geophysicists conference. The result was disappointing: The conference was poorly attended, and Penfield gave his speech to a nearly empty room. There was some coverage in the press but also some critical peer reviews, and the report was forgotten for a decade.

The missing piece of the puzzle

It was the Canadian scientist Alan Hildebrand, at the time a Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona, who reopened the asteroid debate. In 1990, he traveled to Haiti, where a local professor had reported the discovery of what he believed to be the remains of a very ancient volcano. When Hildebrand and his colleagues examined the site, they found signs — including shocked quartz — that convinced the team they were seeing the debris from an asteroid strike. 

The thickness of the layer of debris in Haiti suggested that this had been a major event, and that they were close to the impact point. As Hildebrand carried out his background research, he came across Penfield and Camargo’s neglected 1981 study, and the three men started to collaborate. Between them, they could put forward a convincing argument. 

It was widely accepted that the Earth had undergone a traumatic extinction event around 66 million years ago. With the evidence found in Mexico and Haiti, there was now a convincing argument that a large extraterrestrial impact had occurred around the Gulf of Mexico. However, there was still no irrefutable evidence linking the Gulf crater to the mass extinction, and naysayers pointed out that the two events might have occurred millions of years apart.

The team needed those core samples from the Chicxulub crater, but drilling for new ones was way beyond any university budget. Then, in 1991, they got lucky, discovering that a few core samples had survived. This story is surrounded in mystery, but the samples had probably sat for years in a closet at the University of New Orleans. Once these surviving samples had been located, they not only yielded evidence of an asteroid strike but also allowed scientists to put a date to this event. The signs of a strike were clustered at exactly the right time: 66 million years ago, right on the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary event.

The impact theory today

Initially controversial, Walter Alvarez’s impact hypothesis became widely accepted and known over the following decades. In March of 2010, Science brought together an international panel of experts in geology, paleontology and related fields. The scientists reviewed decades of scientific literature and reached a consensus: The extinction event of 66 million years ago had been sudden and violent, and volcanoes were not to blame. As any seven-year-old can tell us today, the dinosaurs had been doomed by a large object hurtling in from outer space and striking the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Scientific attention returned to the Chicxulub crater in 2016, when money was found for a drilling expedition. Working off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, the team extracted core samples from ground zero, bringing up rocks from 670 meters beneath the seafloor. As scientists studied this new resource, a clearer picture of that day began to emerge. The major finding has been that the impact deformed the surrounding rocks, making them more porous and less dense, creating a nutrient-rich home for simple organisms. The ironic result was that the center of the devastation quickly became a sanctuary for microbes and plankton. This might have important implications for finding life on other planets and moons, where similar impacts have been observed.

There have also been developments in identifying the nature of the asteroid. A study analyzing the chemical signatures of rocks from the end of the Cretaceous period suggests that the Chicxulub asteroid was a carbonaceous chondrite, a class of meteorite that formed billions of years ago in the early solar system and now found in deep space, far beyond Jupiter. No doubt other discoveries await us in the years ahead as we continue to build our picture of the day death and destruction came to the shores of ancient Mexico.

The tiny town of Chicxulub Pueblo has been identified as being at the center of the ancient impact site. There is little to see and the village of 4,000 people attracts few tourists, but tourism related to the Chicxulub impact does exist in the region. The ring of cenotes, or natural sinkholes in limestone bedrock, which can be found all over the Yucatán Peninsula are popular with tourists and may have been created by the impact, though this is debated. The Chicxulub Science Museum is close to Mérida and has exhibit halls on the Solar System, the Chicxulub impact and mass extinctions. The Museo del Meteorito, dedicated specifically to the impact, opened in Progreso in 2022, with museography by the director of Coahuila’s acclaimed Museo del Desierto.

Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.

The post The day the world ended appeared first on Mexico News Daily

In 1843, Mexico is struggling with an economy still devastated by the War of Independence, political instability and crushing debt. Yet at the heart of the Mexican force are the Guadalupe and Moctezuma, the two most modern ships in the world. How these vessels came to belong to the Mexican navy is a story of both technology and politics. 

The crisis of the 1840s

The mid-1800s were a turbulent time around the Gulf of Mexico, with the borders we recognize today not yet established. Texas had been independent for just seven years, and it was uncertain if it would be annexed by the United States, continue as an independent nation or even face reannexation by Mexico. The Mexican government saw enemies on all sides: to the north were the United States, Texas and their filibusters. Across the Atlantic were the menacing imperialist powers of France, which had attacked Mexico in 1839, and England, which had a colony in the southern Yucatán Peninsula. Spain itself had attempted to reconquer Mexico through the 1820s and only recognized Mexican independence in 1836.

Then there were the internal enemies. Texas had seceded from Mexico in the midst of a wave of federalist revolts and secessionist movements sparked by the establishment of the Centralist Republic in 1835, and Yucatán followed a few years later. In October 1841, the state’s Chamber of Deputies declared independence, establishing the Republic of Yucatán for the second time. The two breakaway republics struck a deal: the Texas Navy would defend Yucatán from Mexican attacks by sea, and in exchange Yucatán would pay Texas US $8000 a month.

Both to defend itself and to retake its rebel states, Mexico needed a modern, professional military, and the threat posed by Texas and Yucatán in the Gulf meant that the country urgently needed a new navy. This left Mexico in a weak position, for in 1839 the French had stormed Veracruz and seized most of their fleet. The government of Antonio López de Santa Anna, who returned to power in the same month that Yucatán declared independence, would have to rebuild its navy with limited funds. Still, they did not need a great fleet of ships-of-the-line and went shopping for a cheaper alternative in smaller ships.

The revolution in ship building

It was the right time to be in the market, for three new technologies were revolutionizing ship building: the iron hull, the steam engine and guns that fired exploding shells. If these technologies worked, great warships would no longer sit idle when the wind dropped. They would no longer have to pound each other for hour after hour with cannonballs. Maneuverability and destruction would reach new levels.

Several British companies were experimenting with steamships. However, the man who finally put iron and steam together was John Laird. He had given up a fledgling career in law to join the family company that made steel boilers. It was Laird who saw that the same technique used to make boilers might be used to construct a ship’s hull. However, it was by no means certain that iron would be a better material: centuries of experience had made the wooden warship an incredibly tough construction, while early experiments suggested iron plating did not stand up to cannonballs particularly well.

Steam engines also posed difficulties: early designs swallowed coal at a frightening rate. Like any new technology, steam engines were also temperamental. As a result, the first steamships carried a full set of sails, both to save coal when there was a favorable wind and as backup should the engines break down. Moreover, the first steam ships were driven by paddles; large, fragile objects that sat in the middle of ships, where they were most likely to be hit. Yet the advantages of steam, more or less freeing a ship from the unpredictable wind, were obvious.

Mexico buys a navy

Having made a few small steam-driven vessels, Laird took a gamble and started work on a larger ship. When finished, she would be 183 feet in length with a displacement of 878 tons. The hull would be clad in iron and she would be driven by steam via large side paddles. With the British Navy showing no interest in purchasing his vessel, Laird welcomed an overture from the Mexican government. For firepower, the Mexicans turned to France, where the navy was now using the Paixhans gun, the first of a new generation of weapons that fired explosive shells. As Laird’s shipyard worked to finish the ship, now named the Guadalupe, the Mexicans located a second steam-driven paddle ship being constructed in the Blackwall Yard of London. She was also purchased and christened Moctezuma.

These purchases caused a diplomatic rumpus, with William Kennedy, the Republic of Texas’s consul general in London, protesting to the British government. After considering the protest, the British approved the sale of the ships as merchant vessels, fully aware that the guns they carried in their hulls would be fitted once they had crossed the Atlantic. Britain was walking a fine line in its attempt to be neutral. 

When the Texans learned that the ships would not only be sold to Mexico but that British officers were to command them, the issue was brought before the English courts. The sale, said Texas, was a violation of the Foreign Enlistment Act, which provided for confiscation of ships armed to make war against a country at peace with England. Customs officials detained the Guadalupe until the issue could be settled. British authorities eventually decreed that if the large guns were removed and the crew reduced to that of a merchant vessel, she would be free to sail. 

War in the Gulf

When the Guadalupe set sail on July 4, 1842, under the command of Captain Edward Charlewood, her crew was still uncertain of their destination, although they seemed to have expected that it would be China. On July 18, while at sea, crew members were informed for the first time that they were heading for Mexico. “That place is blockaded by a set of half-breed Yankees, who call themselves Texans,” said Charlewood. “I am determined to break my way through.” 

In Mexico, negotiations were breaking down between the national government and the Yucatecans, who would only rejoin the republic on the condition that Yucatán could retain a degree of autonomy, including keeping trade relations with Texas. In August, Santa Anna decided to retake the peninsula by force and sent ships to seize Ciudad del Carmen.

It was December before the Moctezuma finally sailed. In January, she began transporting Mexican troops from Veracruz to Yucatán and at one point boarded a Texan ship.

Texans were eyeing Mexico’s new ships with reservations, not at all certain that Mexico didn’t plan a seaborne attack on their young nation. The Texan navy was no better equipped than the Mexicans, and certainly no better funded. Indeed, they only had two ships of any size, the sloop-of-war Austin and the brig Wharton. Texas’ second president, Sam Houston, had been elected in December 1841 and had been opposed to the defense deal with Yucatán from the beginning. Considering the Texas Navy impractical and expensive, Houston ordered the fleet back to harbor to be sold. This was unacceptable to Texas Commodore Edwin Ward Moore, who had accrued massive personal debt trying to keep the fleet afloat.

With his forces dwindling, Moore found a solution that would save his ships: he struck a deal in which the Yucatecans would pay his fleet directly to protect the peninsula. Moore ignored his own government and sailed to lift the Mexican naval blockade of the port of Campeche in the spring of 1843. 

The Battle of Campeche

The Mexicans, hearing that Moore had arrived off the Yucatán coast, came searching for him. In addition to their two steam ships, the Mexican Navy sent four sailing ships. Having sailed south in light winds the Texan fleet reached the Yucatan coast to learn that Mexican ships had been sighted some 50 kilometers away. Come daylight on April 30, the Texans spotted the Mexicans steaming towards them.

The Texans were the more aggressive — to be expected, since their commander had defied his own president to be there — while the Mexicans made full use of the mobility their steam engines gave them. They kept the Texans at a distance and turned into the wind whenever they wished to break off the action. There was an hour of long range firing, but by mid-morning the wind was dropping, making the Texans’ task even more difficult. For the Mexicans, the fuses of the Paixhans shells proved frustrating, with many not exploding. A day of skirmishing had been indecisive.

The fleets clashed again on May 16, when the Texans were able to get closer and the two Mexican ships suffered heavy casualties. Commander Charlewood, in charge of the Guadalupe, still felt his ship had stood up well. The Guadalupe, he later wrote, had been hit six times without any great damage and had made a good gun platform. It was their accurate shooting, he wrote, that had forced the Austin out of the battle. At this point both sides broke off and sailed for home where the ships could be repaired and replenished. The Texans were greeted as heroes on their return, and a court-martial cleared Commodore Moore of piracy. 

The two Mexican steam ships continued to give service, but when Yucatán moved to rejoin the republic, they were no longer required. When Mexico needed funds during the 1847-1848 war against the United States, the Guadalupe and Moctezuma were sold to the Spanish Navy and delivered to Cuba. Renamed the Castilla and León, they would see further action in the Mediterranean. It was a surprisingly long career for ships that had pioneered such new technology and which, for a short while, had made the Mexican Navy the most modern in the world.

Bob Pateman is a Mexico-based historian, librarian and a life term hasher. He is editor of On On Magazine, the international history magazine of hashing.

The post When Mexico fought Texas and Yucatán appeared first on Mexico News Daily

The issue of returning archaeological items to their original country is very much in the spotlight, most famously with the ongoing demand for the Parthenon Marbles to be returned to Greece. Mexican items, however, do not tend to attract quite the same headlines. 

Compared, for example, with ancient Egypt, there are relatively few Mexican items in European and American museums, and although many of these are of considerable interest, they tend to be smaller items — and undramatic compared to the Rosetta Stone or the Beard Of The Sphinx. 

Returning items to their nation of origin is not always a clear-cut issue. Few would argue, for example, against returning items stolen from the Baghdad Museum in the recent post-invasion chaos of the U.S. takeover of Iraq, but older items, acquired legally — if perhaps immorally — become a gray area.

Many items in the world’s big museums are there as a result of a formal sharing agreement between a university — who took on the cost of a dig — and the home nation (although this is not always the case). This links with the idea of “cultural internationalism,” which argues that cultural property is not tethered to one nation but belongs to everybody. 

There are certain advantages to spreading human art around the world. How many tourists, pouring money into the Egyptian economy, have been inspired by a visit to the British Museum? Having objects in foreign museums also gives some protection from wars and natural disasters.

What would you say are the highlights of Mexico’s rich precolonial past now sitting in world museums? This is a very personal choice, and I’d love to hear your input. As a historian, librarian and archivist myself, here are what I consider my five highlights: 

5. Human and animal figurines: the Arizona Museum 

The Arizona Museum is billed as a natural history museum, and dinosaurs are indeed the main attraction. However, the curators are aware that their town — located just 300 kilometers from the Mexico-U.S. border — shares much of its culture with northern Mexico, and so the entrance to the Mesoamerica and South America Gallery is dramatic: a giant replica of an Olmec head.

The museum’s collection is largely from Jalisco, Nayarit and Colima, where there was, as the museum describes, “a culture contemporary with, but isolated from, the better known Mexican civilizations.”  

This region of Mexico was noted for its figurine artifacts of humans and animals, largely collected from shaft tomb burials. Dogs were a favourite subject of these ancient ceramic artists since the animals were believed to be guides to heaven and protectors of ancestors. I love the one titled “Dog with Red-Orange Burnished Slip,” a particularly fine example of the type, featuring a nice touch of humor as the dog scratches its ear, presumably to get rid of annoying fleas.

4. Olmec objects: NYC’s Met Museum 

The Met houses one of the most impressive archaeological collections in the world, and is particularly rich in Egyptian, Greek and Assyrian artifacts. The collection of Mexican items is smaller, but it does contain some gems, with the “Seated hollow figure with helmet” being a personal favorite. It dates from between 1200–800 B.C.,  which makes it at least 2,000 years older than the Mexica civilization. 

The statue shows a well-fed child, with folds of fat, gazing upwards, hand to its mouth. Several of these pudgy Olmec babies have been found, with one theory about them being that they were created to advertise how wealthy the society was. Although the origins of the “Seated Hollow Figure with Helmet” are uncertain, it is thought to come from the central highland site of Las Bocas, in the state of Puebla, a region where a number of Olmec-style ceramic objects have been unearthed.

3. Mexican collection: Berlin Ethnological Museum

This museum houses 500,000 works of art and culture from outside Europe, making it one of the largest and most important such collections in the world. The Mexican collection was started in the middle of the 19th century by Ferdinand Conrad Seiffart, the Prussian General Consul in Mexico, and was continued by the merchant Carl Uhde and the scholar Eduard Seler. 

Due to these varied sources — and poor record-keeping in the museum’s early days — there is no precise information on where many of the objects were found. The item I have focused on, “A Clay Figure with Movable Limbs,” is perhaps the finest of a series of clay figures where the limbs are attached to the body with threads. Whether they were dolls, puppets, a child’s toy or created for a magical role is a subject of academic debate. Indeed, it is what we don’t know about this wonderful piece that makes it so exciting. 

2. Borbonicus Codex: Paris National Assembly

One of the greatest crimes humans have ever committed against another culture is Spain’s destruction of Aztec art. Particularly targeted were the Aztec codices, stories recorded onto long sheets of fig-bark paper — known in Mexico as amatl — and primarily pictorial in nature. As a result of the conquistadors’ efficiency, only three codices dating to the precolonial period are believed to have survived. One of these is the Codex Borbonicus. It resides not in Mexico but in France.  

This is a single sheet of bark paper, 14.2 meters long and generally accepted to have been created by Mexica priests shortly before, or possibly just after, the Spanish conquest of their civilization. The story of its survival is uncertain, but at some point, the codex was brought to Spain and then ended up in France in 1826, when it was acquired at auction and given a home in the library of the National Assembly in Paris. 

The Codex Borbonicus describes Mexica divinatory and solar calendars through a range of colorful scenes that include animals, people and deities. It also contains annotations in Spanish, which is one reason the precolonial date is disputed. There are many who believe, however, that these were added sometime after its creation. 

This is one Mesoamerican item that’s the subject of an ownership dispute: In late 2024, representatives of the Hñahñu — known more widely as the Otomi — wrote to French parliament ministers, asking them to support their call for the codex to be returned to its homeland. Some parliament members have promised to put the Hñahñu’s request as a written question before the legislative body, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

1. The double-headed serpent: The British Museum

There was little problem in selecting the item to take the top spot, a doubled-headed serpent kept in the British Museum. Made of cedro wood, it’s covered with over 2,000 pieces of turquoise mosaic. White and red oyster shell colors the serpent’s teeth and mouth. It is one of the finest gems of precolonial art anywhere. While there is a generally accepted history of the object, this history contains a fair amount of guesswork. 

The serpent was probably made by the Mixtecs and offered to the Mexica as tribute. The journey from Mexico is undocumented, but it might have been among the gifts offered to conquistador Hernán Cortés.  

Many such mosaics ended up in Florence workshops, where they were broken up so that the turquoise could be reused to make more contemporary objects. Somebody recognized the importance of the double-headed serpent, and it was spared, eventually finding its way to the English banker Henry Christy, a major collector who left numerous items to the British Museum.

There are only 25 Mexican turquoise mosaics in Europe — nine of which are in the British Museum — and the double-headed serpent is most beautiful and the most mysterious of them all.

The post Where to find the best of Mexico’s artifacts in world museums appeared first on Mexico News Daily

One thing that is untouchable, however, is a team’s colors.

The design might change — indeed, it usually does every year to “encourage” fans to buy a new shirt — but the Club Deportivo Guadalajara soccer team will always play in red-and-white stripes, Club América in shirts that are basically yellow.

The stories behind the colors

The colors of the major soccer clubs have had many different inspirations. When Italy’s Juventus was first formed, the team was so poor that a visiting English team, Notts County, donated its old kit. Notts County now play in League Two of English football, but Juventus still wears the same black-and-white shirt design as it chases its 37th Italian title.

Leeds United wears all white because its manager, Don Revie, wanted to inspire team members by wearing the same kit as mighty Real Madrid. Bristol Rovers opted to don blue-and-white quarters as their manager believed it would make the players look larger and more intimidating. 

Mexican clubs have similar stories, and one of the most colorful concerns the Atlas football club of Guadalajara.

Back in 1916, or so the story goes, the founding players were in a bar in Guadalajara, where they decided to form a football team. Several of the young men had studied at Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, and they chose the burgundy and black Ampleforth colors to honour the institution that had taught them the game.

Ampleforth itself had adopted its red and black colors to link with St. Lawrence — the black representing his blood, and the red his martyrdom.

The history of Club América’s name

That same year, 500 kilometers away in Mexico City, the players of Colegio Mascarones and Colegio Marista de la Perpetua were arguing over the details of a possible amalgamation of their two clubs. The name “América” was accepted as a neutral enough one — and also appropriate as the young men were meeting on Columbus Day. This led to the famous América badge, with its map of the Americas and a ‘C’ for ‘Club’ and an ‘A’ for ‘América’.

There was less agreement, however, on the new team’s colors, which were decided by accident.

As they couldn’t afford to buy proper kit, Rafael Garza Gutiérrez, both a player and the team manager, borrowed a pair of his father’s navy-blue trousers and cut them into shorts. He wore them with an ordinary yellow shirt. Yellow and blue have been the América colors ever since. 

The 1980s saw Mexican football start to become a big business, and marketing became ever more important. América led the way with its iconic 1982 V-shaped designed shirts. It was both eye-catching and symbolic, the chevron V being said to stand for Vittoria. Respected UK soccer magazine FourFourTwo described those kits as “the most hipster in football history.

Years later, the same magazine named América’s 1994–1996 design — in which the straight-lined chevron was updated by a zigzag of diamonds — as the 14th best football shirt ever designed.

“This was a jersey that could have gone badly awry,” the magazine said. “But for us, the primary-colors ambition on display make it more brilliant than bonkers.” 

Not all stories behind club colors are so clear. Guadalajara started playing in all white, and we know there was a European influence on the team’s adopting its famous red, white and blue kit. One story suggests this was copied from the founder’s favorite team, Belgium’s Club Brugge. Others claim the red, white and blue colors come from the  French Tricolor. The argument for this is that a core of the team, including several French players, worked at the Fábricas de Francia.

Whatever story you believe, it is interesting that the club that has become the most Mexican of them all retains its old European-inspired colors.

The UNAM team has one of the most iconic shirts in Mexico — some combination of blue and gold with a varying amount of white, but always dominated by a giant puma head.

The blue and gold on their uniforms are said to be a tribute to the University of Notre Dame, whose football coaches were helping to develop an American-style football team at the university at the time.

The Puma nickname was first used to inspire the team by coach Roberto ‘Tapatío’ Méndez and became the nickname of the numerous sports teams that represented the university. The puma head — a design unique in the world of soccer — found its way onto the shirts around 1975. 

The Mexican national team has occasionally tried to move away from the green shirts, white shorts and red socks they are famous for. Most recently, it played the 2024 Copa América in a highly praised uniform shirt that one media outlet described as having a “maroon base with gray logos and a unique peacock-inspired pattern, referencing Mexican/Mayan mythology.” 

This change seems to have been undertaken for no other reason than fashion, and previous attempts to move away from the standard green have never gained any lasting traction. 

However, when Mexico played in the first World Cup tournament in 1930, the team was dressed in burgundy shirts with dark shorts. Why players used these colors is unknown. The explanation that they were based on Spanish colors hardly seems likely, given the history between the two countries. The reason is probably no more complex than somebody had a set of burgundy shirts to donate to the team.

Mexico retained burgundy shirts until the 1956 Pan-American Games, when it took the political decision to adopt the nation’s flag colors. Burgundy remained a second-choice color, but was often preferred by the players. It was in burgundy that Mexican football had its first World Cup win in 1962. 

Four years later, the official team shirt color was green, but the Mexican team opened against France in the old burgundy and black shorts design. This may have been because the blue uniform color of the French was considered too similar to the Mexican green, particularly under floodlights.

But why Mexico retained these shirts for their next game against England is uncertain. It is possible that the Mexican green and the English white shirts were hard to distinguish on black-and-white television sets. It is just as likely that the tight-fitting, long-sleeved burgundy shirts simply felt better.

What stands out is how well many of the Mexican shirts have been designed since then. The 2022 cream second-choice uniform used during the World Cup in Qatar has become a favorite with shirt collectors, while the ESPN website listed Mexico’s 2024 Copa América shirt as the best design of the tournament.

Finally, we cannot leave the story of Mexican football kits without remembering Jorge Campos. 

From 1988 to 1995, Campos kept goal for UNAM, for whom he made over 200 appearances. He then moved around various clubs in Mexico and the U.S. for a career total of 445 club games. 

Campos designed his own bright kits — said to be inspired by his Acapulco childhood — to make himself look bigger. I am not a fashion writer and limit myself to saying, “Well, they were certainly bright and colorful!” 

They also seem to have worked, as Jorge Campos played for Mexico 129 times.

The post The obscure origin stories behind Mexican soccer teams’ colors appeared first on Mexico News Daily

One of the earliest branches of this species is generally believed to have moved south to settle across southern California, Baja California, western Texas, Sonora and Chihuahua. In this territory, the grey wolf became isolated from its cousins further north. As their genes no longer mixed, the Mexican wolf diverged into a subspecies that was smaller than its northern relations, with a narrower skull and darker, more variable fur. 

The Mexican wolf, Canis lupus baileyi, prospered for thousands of years. The Mexica (Aztecs) associated them with Huitzilopochtli, god of war and the sun, and hundreds of wolf remains have been found in excavations of the sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan. Mexican wolves ranged from northern Mexico to as far south as Oaxaca until the early years of the 20th century when human settlers moved into remote areas in ever-increasing numbers. Now the wolves were hunted for sport, out of fear or to protect livestock. By the early 1970s the Mexican wolf was extinct in the United States and only a handful survived in Mexico.

Conservation begins for the Mexican wolf

In 1973 the U.S. government enacted the Endangered Species Act and wolves were among the first species to be placed under its protection. Not only would further killings be outlawed, but efforts would be made to return wolves to their old range. Between 1977 and 1980 five Mexican wolves — four males and one pregnant female — were captured in Mexico and brought to the U.S. to start a captive breeding program. At this point the wolf was probably extinct in the world. The species was kept alive in captivity, and in 1998, captive born wolves were returned to the wild. On the surface this program has been a magnificent success: there are now an estimated 257 Mexican wolves living wild in the United States, 45 living wild in Mexico and 380 living in captivity in both countries. 

Yet serious challenges remain. One concern is that at its most critical moment, the species was down to a handful of individuals, which may have left the genetic pool compromised. One approach to this problem has been cross-fostering: the introduction of captive-born cubs, selected for their gene diversity, into new litters born in the wild. If they survive and breed, these animals will help to expand the Mexican wolf’s gene pool. This process requires locating a den with a newborn litter and rushing a captive-born cub to the area. When the mother goes hunting, a researcher can crawl into the narrow den and place the cub among its new siblings. It is an expensive process and around 50% of all wild-born wolf pups die in their first year of life, so the possibility of an introduced cub eventually reproducing is far from guaranteed. However, there is evidence that the program is working, with 20 litters being identified as coming from cross-fostered wolves. 

There are other problems. In the U.S., Interstate 40 has been designated as the northern limit of the Mexican wolf’s permitted range. The wolves, of course, are unaware of this, and in 2021 two wolves moved north, most likely looking for mates. A wolf known as Asha became a regular trespasser and was finally relocated to a conservation center in New Mexico. A male wolf known as Anubis was not so lucky: he was illegally shot near Flagstaff. 

A transnational conservation effort

In a time of a changing climate the Mexican wolf’s natural prey might be drifting ever further north, increasingly drawing wolves out of the areas humans have designated for them. The long-term survival plan centers on establishing several separate sanctuaries, an insurance if one area should be decimated by disease or other disaster. However, a five-year evaluation released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 2024 expressed concerns about the Mexican population. 

The Endangered Species Act has real teeth; if caught, the hunters who shot Anubis face a 100,000 dollar fine and significant jail time. In Mexico, a combination of less environmental education and less resources has meant that wolves are not offered the same protection. 39 wolf deaths between 2011 and 2023 were classified as human-caused, with poison being the biggest killer. A combination of high mortality and smaller than hoped for release numbers means the Mexican target of 100 wolves living in the wild has not been met. 

The wild Mexican wolf population in Mexico itself is optimistically numbered at just under 50, but that number is disputed. As Greta Anderson, deputy director of the non-profit Western Watersheds Project explains, “There are no collared animals alive in Mexico, so any remaining population is total speculation. It’s hard to imagine that there are many animals there— the death rate for collared wolves is so high that it’s hard to imagine uncollared animals are somehow escaping persecution.” There are no immediate plans to change an approach that seems to be working well north of the border. Instead, hope is still placed in continuing to educate local communities and implementing a compensation plan to reimburse farmers for livestock lost to wolves. 

Mexican wolves don’t escape politics

Mexico’s wolf problems are shared by the United States. In 2020, the first Trump administration removed most gray wolves from the U.S. endangered species list. Though that decision was vacated by a U.S. District Court in 2022, the Biden administration generally continued the trend of removing protections for wolves. In the coming years the complaints of farmers losing livestock may well expect to receive more favorable hearings. Neither has the success that has been achieved so far come cheaply, and future funding is in doubt. 

“I fear we’ll see many attacks on the Endangered Species Act in general, and widespread defunding of programs that address the parallel biodiversity and climate crises,” Greta Anderson told Mexico News Daily. That the Mexican wolf is still with us, and their numbers increasing, is wonderful news, but the battle to save them is far from won.

The post A long road ahead for the Mexican wolf appeared first on Mexico News Daily

Their arrival didn’t introduce women’s soccer to Mexico but it certainly contributed to its growth. Around Mexico, a few enthusiastic young women recruited friends and assembled teams to play the Costa Rican visitors — and carried on playing afterward, which would lead within just a few years to Mexico creating a women’s national selection team and even hosting the newly created Women’s World Cup — to great success.

How did this happen?

By 1969, there was enough enthusiasm to stage the first Mexican women’s championship, a competition involving 17 teams from around Mexico City. At this point, the situation in Mexico was very similar to that of women’s soccer in Europe — where a handful of clubs operated under the radar, and usually without any recognition or assistance from the male-dominated associations.

A World Cup for women’s soccer

The pockets of enthusiasm in Europe had gained enough traction in the 1960s to form the Federation of Independent European Female Football (FIEFF). In 1969, it organized a World Cup competition for women’s soccer.

Italy, who had led the way in women’s soccer in 1968 with a nationwide and semiprofessional women’s league, was the natural host, but how Mexico came to be one of the eight invited teams remains a mystery. We do know that they were not on the original list of competing teams and were only included only after Argentina and Brazil dropped out.

The Mexican team played its first game in the city of Bari, beating Austria 9-0 and throwing Alicia Vargas into the spotlight with four goals.

Vargas’ story is worth following, as it is typical of so many women players of this generation. She had played soccer with her brothers and neighborhood boys in the street and — without realizing it — became a skilful player. When she was just 13, she saw more organized games involving the Guadalajara club and asked if she could join in. Despite no formal training, the skills she’d picked up on the street made her an instant star.

In Italy, she became  “La Pelé” Vargas and was offered a contract to stay on to play with the Real Torino team, but she chose to return to Mexico.

During a two-day conference after the Cup in Torino, Mexico’s representatives agreed to host the next tournament. The Federation of Mexican Football, however, opposed the idea and threatened fines on any club that granted women access to their stadiums.

The organizers got around this by hiring the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City and the Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara. Both stadiums were privately owned and therefore beyond the control of the Federation.

This had an unforeseen impact on the event. Both stadiums were owned by media outlets wanting a successful tournament. Their backing meant there would be no lack of advertising or media coverage. In addition, the Italian Martini & Rossi company covered the cost of hotels, flights and equipment for the Mexico event.

Planners invited Argentina, Denmark, England, France and Italy to join Mexico in the tournament. Team members arriving in Mexico City found the city swamped with posters and banners for the event. Central to the advertising campaign was Xóchitl, the tournament’s mascot, a dark-haired little girl with pigtails who wore a red, white and green uniform jersey and short shorts.

Back then, even though several of the players on many of the teams, Mexico’s included, were minors as young as 13, organizers were not shy about using the team’s gender and sexuality to fill stadiums. The goal posts were painted pink. In between playing and attending a press interview, the players were encouraged to use the beauty salon situated inside the locker rooms. 

“Soccer,” the New York Times reported at the time, “goes sexy south of the border.”

While this grates with today’s attitudes, organizers argued that the makeup and glamour wasn’t just to encourage men into the stadiums but also to show young women that sports could be feminine and cool. 

The advertising paid off. Helped by live TV coverage, matches averaged crowds of 15,000, and Mexico’s games in the Aztec Stadium probably — there were no official figures — attracted 100,000 fans. For the competitors, used to playing on local park pitches, it was an unbelievable experience.

Off the pitch, they were superstars, with crowds gathering outside their hotel and mobbing the team coaches. The fans included a few lovesick young boys with bunches of flowers! 

The Mexicans had been training for two months and were well prepared. They won both their group games and then beat Italy to make the final. The standard of play was “okay.” The Mexican team had good basic ball control, and there was a willingness to run with the ball. However, the games lacked pace, and defenders often needed an extra touch to control the ball, allowing them to get robbed close to their own penalty area.

Overall, as to be expected, there was also a lack of power compared to the men’s game, and goal kicks usually landed well short of the halfway line.

Mexico had done well in making the final, but not all was well behind the scenes. With the tournament drawing in considerable revenue, the Mexican team asked for the creation of a bonus fund that would be split between them. Disputes over this distracted the team in the days before the final game.

Even so, the Danes were the outstanding team of the tournament, and it is doubtful that the squabble in the Mexican camp had any real impact on the result. In the end, Denmark’s 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen scored a hat trick to guide her team to the title.

A stunning 110,000 spectators packed the Estadio Azteca for that game, and coach Harry Batt felt a corner had been turned.

Footage from the Mexico vs. Denmark final in 1971 in Mexico City, in which Denmark’s 15-year-old Susanne Augustesen took her team to victory against Mexico.

“I am certain,” he told the press on his return to England, “that in the future, there will be full-time professional ladies’ teams in this country.”

His team returned home with their suitcases so full of souvenirs that some worried about getting through customs. However, they left the fervor of 100,000-spectator crowds only to return to a wall of indifference back home. One player, invited to join her heroes Newcastle United at a club dinner, sat through a comedian whose main act was to ridicule women’s football. The young players who returned to school were not acknowledged in assembly.

And not just male authorities were indifferent: An official Women’s Football Association had just been formed, and although it had declined to send a team to Mexico, the association’s officials were furious at Harry Batt for what they saw as going behind their backs. Batt found himself blacklisted by the Women’s Football Association. 

It was not only the English authorities cold-shouldered their team returning from Mexico. A couple of years later, the Danish Football Association (DBU) took over the running of women’s football in Denmark and launched an official national team. Games were few and far between, and they never called up Augustesen for an official international, even though she had become one of the great stars of the Italian professional league.

It was much the same story for the Mexican team. The press and cameras departed, and those who carried on playing did so on dusty second-rate pitches, relying on volunteers to keep the teams going. Internationally, there were a few more competitions, the mundialitos, but they were minor events, usually staged in Italy over the duration of a week for six invited teams. Mexico participated in the 1986 event but struggled in a tournament that nobody suggested had world championship status.

Memories of the 1971 World Cup faded, and the tournament had little impact on the later development of women’s football. That revolution was driven by events in the United States. In 1975, Pele joined the New York Cosmos, and soccer suddenly became the most popular sport for children in the U.S. It didn’t require the expensive equipment of baseball or American football, or carry the dangers of the latter.

Americans knew nothing about soccer, including the fact that only boys were supposed to play, and so a generation of American girls grew up playing soccer in mixed games. By the time an official Women’s World Cup started in 1991, U.S. women’s soccer was the world superpower, doing better than its male counterparts, winning two of the first three tournaments and attracting a 94,000 crowd for the 1999 final in Pasadena.

The men who controlled the game slowly came to realize that soccer was a business — and in what business plan did it make sense to deliberately exclude half of the world’s population? With FIFA’s blessing, women’s soccer has gone from strength to strength.

Mexico has been somewhat left behind by the modern growth of the women’s sport, although that gap is closing. Today, the Mexican women’s professional league is in its ninth season, with wide television coverage and sponsorships allowing players to earn a reasonable monthly wage — about the same as a well-paid teacher in a private school.

Attendance hovers around 3,000, good compared to other women’s leagues around the world but dwarfed by the crowds watching men’s games. While Amelia Valverde Villalobos has done well at C.F. Monterrey, and Mónica Vergara has coached the national team, the coaching positions with the big female teams remain stubbornly filled by men.

The Mexican national team ‘El Tri Femenil’ has not become the regional power in the way that the men’s team has been for generations. They have not qualified for the World Cup since 2015, and after a disappointing performance in the 2022 CONCACAF championship, the team will miss the next round of big international tournaments.

As women’s soccer around the world moves slowly but steadily towards equality, the girls of 1971 are finally gaining some recognition. A movie about the Mexican World Cup, “Copa 71,” premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival to positive reviews. Yet, the battle for equality is ongoing.

A documentary produced by Venus and Serena Williams, “Copa ’71” tells the story of the 1971 Mexico City Women’s World Cup via interviews with many of the participants.

As late as 2016, Barcelona FC was slammed online for sending its men’s and women’s teams to the same tournament, giving the male players business-class tickets while the women’s team flew economy.

However, the fact that this was recognized as an injustice perhaps shows how far we have progressed.

The post The day Mexican women’s soccer ruled the world appeared first on Mexico News Daily