Canadian tourist, 68, fights off attacker in Nayarit robbery 'Warrior woman' cites taekwondo and resilience Thursday, February 28, 2019 A 68-year-old woman’s taekwondo skills....

Marianne Clift immediately after the attack and a week later.

Canadian tourist, 68, fights off attacker in Nayarit robbery

'Warrior woman' cites taekwondo and resilience

Thursday, February 28, 2019

A 68-year-old woman’s taekwondo skills and resilience saved her life during a home invasion and robbery in a Nayarit beach town.

Canadian visitor Marianne Clift was alone in a vacation home that she and her husband had rented in Bucerias when she was awoken in the early hours of February 18 by a man choking her in her bed.

The retired elementary school teacher and church organist, who had studied taekwondo nearly 20 years prior, said she started “kicking like mad” and scratching and jabbing at the assailant’s face and eyes, but could not cry out because her attacker’s grip was so strong.

Then, Clift said she heard a woman’s voice and the man straddling her responding in Spanish, leading Clift to believe that there were two people in the house. When her attacker briefly loosened his grip, she yelled for help — and then she was knocked out by a punch in the face.

When Clift regained consciousness, her attackers were gone, along with her cellphone, money, passport, identification, bank cards, jewelry and keys to the vacation home. Clift later wondered if she had perhaps been left for dead.

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Staggering to the bathroom, Clift saw in the mirror that her eye and cheek were turning purple and blood was gushing from a cut on her cheek.

“I realized I had to get help.”

Unable to open the vacation complex’s front gate without her keys, Clift banged on another tenant’s door. She then walked to the home of a cousin who had a home nearby, where she called police.

Clift received six stitches at the hospital emergency room to close the knife wound on her cheek and was also treated for a second knife wound on her elbow and serious bruising on her chest and arm.

Investigators later told Clift that the attacker had climbed over the fence and used a screwdriver to break in through the locked front door of the home. She recalled that when the police saw the amount of blood in the house, the case was escalated to an attempted murder and robbery.

Clift said that news of her ordeal was especially hard on her family and her husband, who had flown back to their home in Sarnia, Canada, on a short business trip the night before the attack.

Clift found a safe place to stay while she filled out police reports and the Canadian embassy helped her secure a temporary passport and fly home.

Though her stitches came out on Monday and the black eye has faded, Clift’s neck and jaw remain severely bruised from the assault.

A frequent visitor to Mexico, Clift said that up until the attack she and her husband had felt safe in Bucerias, a town of about 17,000, and that their rented vacation home’s 12-foot fence and the proximity of a cousin’s house nearby contributed to their sense of security.

Clift said she does not expect the police to find her attackers.

Back home in Sarnia with her family, Clift said that recounting the story has often led her to laughter as well as tears.

“We’re a tough, resilient family,” the self-described “warrior woman” said.

“I have nothing but gratitude to be alive.”

Source: The Observer (en)

The remarkable Miss Adela Breton, explorer extraordinaire An archaeological artist who fell in love with Mexico's ruins By John Pint

Adela Breton's watercolor of the east façade of the 'Nunnery' at Chichén Itzá.

The remarkable Miss Adela Breton, explorer extraordinaire

An archaeological artist who fell in love with Mexico's ruins

By John Pint

Friday, March 1, 2019

In 1894, a man living near the famed ruins of Teotihuacán, 50 kilometers from modern Mexico City, discovered a small, pre-Hispanic house whose walls were covered with beautifully colored murals.

The place was called Teopancaxco or “La Casa de Barrios.” The paintings were the first of their kind found at Teotihuacán and visitors considered them spectacular.

Weather and time eventually did their damage to the murals and today we would have little idea of how they once looked if it were not for an extraordinary Englishwoman named Adela Breton who had fallen in love with Mexico’s ruins and who painstakingly reproduced these murals as watercolors.

Mary Frech, author of Adela Breton, a Victorian Artist Amid Mexico’s Ruins, says, quoting James Langley:

“Adela made the most comprehensive record of the murals at Teopancaxco. Her re-creation of the colours of the murals is unsurpassed compared with the few colour reproductions available, and thus constitutes an irreplaceable memorial of the now destroyed masterpieces.’”

Adela Breton, English explorer and artist.

What was an unmarried Victorian gentlewoman doing in Mexico before the turn of the century, 5,500 miles from home?

Exploring, painting, sketching, measuring and photographing not only Mexico’s best-known archaeological sites like those at Chichén Itzá but, it seems, even obscure ruins from the extensive Teuchitlán Tradition of western Mexico which, it was generally believed, were unheard of before archaeologist Phil Weigand gazed upon the Guachimontones in 1969.

Proof of Adela Breton’s keen observations in Jalisco came to light when the Museum of Bristol decided to digitize many of her works and publish them on the internet. For the first time, people outside Bristol could see Breton’s sketches of the now famous Circular Pyramids of Teuchitlán in Jalisco.

“Accurate drawings of the Guachimontones made in 1896?” exclaimed Jalisco archaeologist Rodrigo Esparza. “That’s amazing!” Even more amazing was the discovery, again thanks to the Bristol Museum, that Adela Breton had taken the first known photographs of the three largest “Guaxi mounds,” as she labeled them.

Did Breton publish anything related to the Guachimontones?  The answer is yes, but apparently only a few words. Here is what she says in a paper delivered at the International Congress of Americanists in 1902:

“Teuchitlán is a small town at the foot of a long spur of [Tequila] volcano . . . . At Teuchitlán, obsidian rejects are thickly strewn over a great extent of ground.  In addition to the obsidian, it has a most interesting ancient site on the summit of the hill, and the remarkable mounds and circles called Huaerchi Monton half-way up.”

Tracing of a mural painting from Upper Temple of the Jaguars.

Breton was able to reach this remote corner of Jalisco thanks to a train line built only a few years before, a modernization project of President Porfirio Diáz. She brought with her plenty of trunks, her horse and her ever resourceful guide, Pablo Solorio, who somehow learned that a mound housing an untouched tomb had been discovered near the town of Etzatlán and had recently been opened.

After visiting the Guachimontones, Adela went to the Mound of Guadalupe and gives us what is probably the first description of the unearthing of a burial site in western Mexico. “Unfortunately,” she reported, “there was no skilled supervision, no data were secured and most of the figures were broken.”

Fortunately, however, the resourceful Adela was on hand for the event and recorded, according to Mary Frech, that “the mound was about 40 feet high and held a burial with pots, jewelry, clay ‘portrait’ figures ranging from 12 to 20 inches tall and other artifacts.” Of course, she sketched a number of those broken figures and even photographed the Mound of Guadalupe, of which today little is left to see.

Adela Catherine Breton was born in London in 1849. After the death of both her parents she was “easily convinced” by pioneer in archaeological techniques Alfred Maudslay to travel to Chichén Itzá to make sketches which would allow Maudslay to check the accuracy of his own drawings, before publishing his Biologia Centrali-Americana. Thus began her curious career as an archaeological artist.

Upon arriving in Yucatán, Adela developed a turbulent relationship with Edward Thompson, the United States consul there. According to the Harvard University Archives, Thompson wrote to Fredric Putnam, curator of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology, accusing Breton of “meddling” at Chichén Itzá.

Says Thompson: “To my horror I found out the day I left Chichén that she proposes to return to Chicheen shortly for another period of time. She certainly is an artist as regards landscapes at least and she has made one painting in the intervals of her work for Maudslay that is really very nice. She brought out the artistic points of the ‘Nunnery’ in a wonderful manner.”

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  Archaeological artist Adela Breton and her Mexican guide Pablo Solorio.

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After a few months, he writes again to Putnam: “She has a very peculiar character but I think that she is one of those persons that improves as one knows them better. She most certainly is a true artist.”

In the opinion of Matt Williams of the Bath Royal Literary & Scientific Institution, Adela “developed into a world-renowned archaeological copyist thanks to her drawings of friezes, carved reliefs, painted plasters and other cultural treasures – some of which are now the only records that remain of items long since lost to vandalism and decay.”

According to Williams, Adela was a well-seasoned traveler and she once wrote: “I used to live chiefly on air and a few peanuts for the long riding journeys — 30 miles without any breakfast.”

“Adela chose not to marry,” he adds, “as it was the only thing that guaranteed a woman’s independence in those days. She wanted to be free to travel and chart her own destiny.”

According to Kate Devlin, a writer for Trowelblazers.com, Harvard anthropologist Alfred Tozzer once said, “You look at Miss Breton and set her down as a weak, frail and delicate person who goes into convulsions at the sight of the slightest unconventionality in the way of living. But I assure you, her appearance is utterly at variance with her real self.”

Adela Breton died at age 73 in Barbados in 1923, and left most of her work and collection to the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.

• Photo credits: Bristol Culture/Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives.

The writer has lived near Guadalajara, Jalisco, for more than 30 years and is the author of A Guide to West Mexico’s Guachimontones and Surrounding Area and co-author of Outdoors in Western Mexico. More of his writing can be found on his website.

Airlines association says operating three airports will be ‘complex’ Safe and efficient air traffic management a big challenge, says IATA head

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/operating-three-airports-will-be-complex/?utm_source=Mexico+News+Today&utm_campaign=a404fae20c-MNT+mar01-2019&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f1536a3787-a404fae20c-348153685

Airlines association chief de Juniac.

Airlines association says operating three airports will be ‘complex’

Safe and efficient air traffic management a big challenge, says IATA head

Friday, March 1, 2019

Operating three airports within close proximity to each other in Mexico City and México state will be “complex” and “challenging,” according to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

“The government’s plan is for three airports to serve Mexico City: the current one, Toluca and the Santa Lucía airbase. I will be frank. Making this work will be challenging,” Alexendre de Juniac said yesterday at an IATA aviation summit in Mexico City.

The former Air France CEO outlined a range of challenges that will arise from operating the three airports simultaneously as well as limitations of each individual one.

The Mexico City airport “is already operating above its design capacity,” de Juniac said, adding that “converting the government hangar to a terminal is unlikely to meaningfully improve the situation when there is no practical way to add a third runway.”

Toluca Airport’s single runway “can certainly be utilized more fully” but will likely only be used for domestic flights, de Juniac said, adding that the distance of 70 kilometers to the Mexico City airport “makes efficient connections nearly impossible.”

He also said that converting the Santa Lucía air force base in México state “will take time and significant investment” and that “the military will have to gain experience in running a civilian airport.”

That is a “very different thing” to running an airbase, de Juniac added.

“Even when we resolve the airport issues, we have a potentially even bigger challenge to provide safe and efficient air traffic management. The three airports are in very close proximity and the runway orientations are not parallel which makes it complex. Landing and take-off paths are further restricted by mountainous terrain. And high altitude with seasonally hot temperatures are an additional factor which need to be taken into account,” he said.

“I cannot over-emphasize the need for technical coordination with operators to carefully manage these parameters. Safety must never be compromised. And we don’t want to find that investments in these three airports are compromised by air traffic management requirements that ultimately limit their utilization. Getting air traffic management right is mission-critical,” de Juniac added.

The IATA chief said it was “no secret that we are disappointed with the decision to discontinue” the new Mexico City airport, which “would have secured Mexico City’s long-term position as a major global player in the aviation industry.”

However, de Juniac also said that “we accept that a decision has been made” and that “IATA is eager and fully committed to work with the government to find the most effective way to prepare Mexico City – and indeed the entire Mexican industry – to meet the growing demand to fly.”

Communication and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Espriú agreed with the IATA boss that operating three airports will be challenging but stressed that the government is working to ensure that there will be no risks associated with their simultaneous use.

He explained that Navblue, a Canadian subsidiary of Airbus, will be responsible for restructuring the use of airspace so that flights can take off from and land at the three airports at the same time.

“It must be said that a large part of the work was already started by the Navigation Services for Mexican Airspace [Seneam, a government agency],” Jiménez said.

They [Navblue] told us in a first estimate that it would cost US $6 million but seeing the progress of Seneam, the quote will be less.”

The secretary added that French airport operator Aéroports de Paris is collaborating on the development of the master plan for the Santa Lucía airport, which will be built by the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena).

Jiménez conceded that the government hasn’t yet provided detailed information about its plan at Santa Lucía, explaining that reaching agreements with investors involved in the canceled airport project was a constraining factor.

However, President López Obrador will announce details soon, he said.

Jiménez also said that it was likely that most airlines would only operate at one of the three airports in the greater Mexico City area to avoid logistical problems. All airport stakeholders will be involved in logistics planning for the three airports, he explained.

Meanwhile, materials purchased to build the cancelled airport project in Texcoco, México state, will either be put up for sale or used in other government infrastructure projects.

Tezontle and basalt, two volcanic rocks widely used in construction, could be used in the construction of the Maya Train or Isthmus of Tehuantepec train projects, Jiménez said.

Source: El Economista (sp) 

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