Mexico City Airport to Quadruple Passenger Capacity

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MexicoStar.com
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September 4, 2014

Last year, Mexico City's Benito Juarez International led all Latin American airports in takeoffs and landings and handled a record 31.5 million passengers in 2013.

Mexico City - Mexico plans a new $9.15 billion international airport which will eventually handle 120 million passengers a year, quadrupling the congested current hub's capacity, President Enrique Peña Nieto said on Tuesday.

In his annual state-of-the-nation address, Peña Nieto said the new Mexico City airport would have six runways, as Reuters reported in June, up from the two the current airport has. It could eventually surpass the world's busiest airport in Atlanta, Georgia, which handled over 94 million passengers last year.

Peña Nieto said he would present on Wednesday the airport plan, which aims to ease delays at the current hub, the Benito Juarez International Airport.

Mexico's President Enrique Peña Nieto addresses the audience during his second State of the Union address at the National Palace in Mexico City, September 2, 2014.

Peña Nieto did not say how quickly the airport would reach its targeted capacity, nor when construction would begin. The current hub handled 31.5 million passengers in 2013.

Without a new airport, the government is concerned Mexico may lose competitiveness.

"The current saturation restricts communication within the country, limits Mexico's connectivity to the world, restrains trade and investment, and creates delays for users," Peña Nieto said at an event in Mexico City.

"We cannot keep postponing a serious solution," he added.

Read more at MexicoStar.com.

Vivaaerobus Offers Flights for Seven Pesos

by Maureen Dietrich on 25 Nov 13
mazmessenger.com
 

A Vivaaerobus advertisement in the Noroeste newspaper this morning offers one way flights  from Mazatlan to Mexico City or Monterrey for 7 pesos (plus taxes) in celebration of their seven year anniversary.

Tickets must be purchased between November 25 and December 1, 2013 for flights between February 5 and July 30, 2014. The promotion is not valid March 13-18, April 10-May 6 or May 15-20, 2014. Tickets must be purchased through their website at www.vivaaerobus.com.

 (from Noroeste)

Finding Kerouac’s Mexico

Castilla Beach in Mazatlán

A woman steps in the ocean as the sun sets over Castilla Beach in Mazatlán, a resort city in Sinaloa, that Jack Kerouac visited in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Photos by Katie Orlinsky/The New York Times

Mexico City’s La Roma neighborhood

A family plays at a park in Mexico City’s La Roma neighborhood, where Kerouac stayed with William Burroughs.

Playa Azul in Mazatlán, a resort city in Sinaloa, Mexico.

Jack Kerouac

Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac. 

A bus headed to Mexico City leave Mazatlán, the resort city in Sinaloa, Mexico.

 In 1952, Kerouac took a bus from the Arizona border to Mexico City.

Photos by Katie Orlinsky/The New York Times

A traveler passes a cart selling Mexican flags in Mexico City’s La Roma neighborhood.

Posted: Sunday, October 13, 2013 6:00 pm

By Damien Cave New York Times El Paso Inc.

 

I found Jack Kerouac’s Mexico on a strip of beach that separated the old hotels from the heaving Pacific, at a bar near where he sat on the sea wall and watched the sunset 61 years ago.
My best friends in Mazatlán, whom I had met only a day earlier, were behind me arguing and laughing. But with a beer in hand and my own perfect view of daylight’s final yawn, I was too blissed out to talk.
That moment was the closest I got to channeling the Beat Generation writer on my journey inspired by Kerouac’s 1952 bus trip from the Arizona border to Mexico City. The scene before me called to mind the Mazatlán he described to Allen Ginsberg: “hot and flat right on the surf, no tourists whatever, the wonder spot of the Mexicos really but nobody hardly knows, a dusty crazy wild city on beautiful Acapulco surfs.”

Still, I wondered, how much did Kerouac’s romantic vision match up with reality?

Mazatlán is one of the many places that the Beats used to bolster the idea of Mexico as the destination for debauched recreation and self-discovery. Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, who moved to Mexico City in 1949 to avoid a drug charge in New Orleans, laid down in literature a charmingly simple notion of the country that has endured.

Kerouac was a mythmaker in many respects. His writing turned struggling friends into epic heroes, and persuaded many youthful vagabonds (my former self included) to go now, to find saints among the sinners. Along the way, he created an impression that he and his ilk were not tourists, but rather ideal American travelers, engaged and sensitive, “desirous of everything at the same time,” as he wrote in “On the Road.”

Even now, as a correspondent here since 2010, I often see links between the idyllic American fantasy and Mexico’s most obvious failures (security) and triumphs (contemporary art). But Kerouac was a pioneer. And as a follower, I wanted to see where he went right or wrong, and what had changed since he helped define Mexico for millions of readers. Following the route from Mazatlán to Mexico City, I hoped to figure out if his dreamy vision could still be found, even as I confronted some of the cold, hard tragedies that many Americans miss.

My newfound friends in Mazatlán, Dr. Juan Fernando Barraza and Victor Coppel, were among the many who disagreed on whether Mazatlán’s rapid growth from the ‘60s through the ‘80s changed the city for the better. Sinaloa, the state where Mazatlán is, was already a major source of marijuana in the United States by Kerouac’s time – a detail he had to know – but as American drug use increased in the decades that followed, Barraza said the easy money and the influence of American partyers gradually pushed Mazatlán from its simple roots.

“We haven’t copied the best Americans, but the worst,” said the doctor.

Both of my unofficial guides – relatives of a friend of mine in Los Angeles – did agree on one thing: Mazatlán was facing another moment of reconsideration. This city of 440,000 people now finds itself on the hung-over side of a binge that began around Kerouac’s time, and as with Mexico itself, it is often hard to tell whether the future should be met with optimism or despair.

When Kerouac reached Mexico City at dawn after a long bus ride through Guadalajara, he caught a few hours of sleep in “a criminal’s hovel,” then made his way to Burroughs’ house in La Roma, a turn-of-the-century neighborhood of grand old homes that was starting to slip into disrepair.

My arrival in La Roma could not have been more different. If Mazatlán reflects what can go wrong when American excess mixes with Mexican impunity, La Roma represents what can go right when Mexicans with a taste of the world zero in on a single community.

But corruption was still holding things back. Business owners said permits typically require bribes. To some degree, they argued, not much has changed since corruption helped Burroughs flee a murder charge after he shot and killed his wife during a game of William Tell a few months before Kerouac’s 1952 visit.

But these days, at least in La Roma, there is also a new check on the usual abuse of power. Consider the case of Maximo Bistrot, one of the best restaurants in La Roma. In April, a social media revolt kept government inspectors from shutting it down after the daughter of the head of Mexico’s main consumer protection agency complained about not receiving the table she wanted. Then came an even greater coup: Mexico’s president fired her father, the agency chief.

After eating at the restaurant, I tried to imagine what Kerouac would have made of it. Maybe it depends on which Kerouac we imagine. He was 30 when he took that bus trip, and he was mostly too self-absorbed to see beyond the “frenzy and a dream” that defined his visit in “On the Road.”

But what about Kerouac as an old man? If he hadn’t died from alcoholism in 1969 at age 47, maybe he would have moved to Mexico and tried harder to understand and explain the country.

With more time alive and in Mexico, Kerouac could have been someone that Mexico and the United States still sorely need: a binational conscience. Imagine the trips he could have made, the complicated, multilayered stories he could have told about life on both sides of the border. Imagine the everything.

Cruise ships Open to Returning to Mazatlán, with Conditions

Posted by Maureen Dietrich on 1 Oct 13  

mazmessenger.com

 

 

A committee comprised of the Sinaloa Governor, Secretary and subsecretary of Tourism, the Mayor of Mazatlán, a Sinaloa federal deputy and hotel owner met with cruise line representatives yesterday in Cartagena de Indias, Columbia.

The occasion was the annual meeting of the Association of Florida and Caribbean cruise ship lines.

Tourism secretary Francisco Córdova Celaya discussed with a Royal Caribbean Cruises representative and other cruise lines the return of cruise ships to Mazatlán.

In a Sinaloa government communiqué, the Royal Caribbean representative said they are evaluating returning to our port from September to October, 2015 and 2016.

However, the press release said, the representative asked the Sinaloa delegation to demonstrate changes made in the Centro Historico, including (arrangements) for day trips to the Baluarte Bridge on the Mazatlán-Durango highway with the view to selling tour packages in the United States.

He also spoke of promoting the use of pulmonias as picturesque transport in Mazatlán, only if there is a security policy in place for passengers.

The Royal Caribbean representative advised that its cruise ships will dock in Topolobampo twice in 2013 and six times between January and March, 2014.

 (from Noroeste)

Mexico City on the Mind

September 23, 2013 3:03pm

style.com

Mexico City is rapidly emerging as a—if not the—hotbed for emerging art, fashion, and design. It boasts one of the globe’s highest concentrations of museums, features cutting-edge architecture (check out Museo Soumaya, a hull-like structure plated in honeycomb blocks designed by the firm FR-EE), and just yesterday, received attention in a front-page New York Times article about its increasing attractiveness for expatriate artists and entrepreneurs. It seems the metropolis has appealed to designers, too, as traces of Mexico City popped up on a host of Spring ’14 runways.

While such labels as Rodebjer and Rebecca Minkoff pulled inspiration from Mexico, the biggest splash belonged to Prada (as big splashes often do). Signora Miuccia commissioned a panel of muralists to paint her set with giant faces, which were replicated on dresses, skirts, and coats. Prada reported that political art out of Mexico—particularly the work of Diego Rivera—served as a strong source of inspiration, and the collection’s first look featured a print by Mexican street artist Stinkfish.

At House of Holland, Henry Holland paid homage to Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 hit Romeo + Juliet, much of which was filmed in Mexico City. Splendid hues and religious motifs weren’t compromised, thanks to prints—which nodded to Mexico’s deep Catholic roots—by L.A.-based tattoo artist Alex Garcia.

Considering that Annette and Phoebe Stephens—the duo behind New York-based jewelry line Anndra Neen—were raised in Mexico City, it is perhaps not surprising that notes from their childhood emerged in their latest offering. Spring ’14′s sculptural shields, triangular necklaces, and woven metal wares were reportedly inspired by Ron Fricke’s 1992 globe-trotting documentary Baraka. The designers, who produce the line in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa neighborhood, embraced not just Mexican artisanship but Namibian and MENA crafts as well. To top it off, the Stephens sisters showed their new range alongside their personal collection of Rivera works—the exact artist that led Ms. Prada, thousands of miles away in Milan, to her own effort.

—Nick Remsen