Jocotepec’s Highway Department attended the accident.
A collision occurred at the access to the Jocotepec beltway during midday on January 26, leaving two vehicles damaged.
The area where the accident occurred has unstable asphalt which causes motorists to get out of control, in addition, there are no signs or signage at the intersection to instruct drivers who do not know the area.
Translated by Kerry Watson
The red SUV damaged in the accident.
A head-on collision occurred in Ajijic on the Chapala-Jocotepec highway, between Rio Bravo and Seis Esquinas, in the area of the speed bumps. A red Audi SUV and a white Dodge pickup were involved in the accident. According to reports, the driver of the white pickup left the scene of the accident.
The accident was attended by traffic police, while traffic was held up due to the accident.
Translated by Christalle Dalsted
Facade of Chapala’s City Hall. Photo: Mr. Arturo Ortega.
Editor. – The Institute of Transparency and Public Information and Protection of Personal Data of the State of Jalisco (ITEI) ordered the Municipality of Chapala to publish in its internet portal biographical information on officials and information on administrative penalties.
During the Third Ordinary Session, the Plenary of the Council of the ITEI required the City Council to publish the information as required by Article 8, point 1, section V in accordance with file 514/2021 of the transparency appeal.
Since “no data was located in the reference section” of the Municipal Government’s website, the information must be published or updated in the next 15 days. If the information does not exist, the provisions of the transparency law must be followed.
The ITEI Board determined that the Municipality had already fulfilled the requests for payroll, vehicle fleet and internal regulation (information in files 2796/2021, 526/2021, 3316/2021 and 979/2021).
In November 2021, the ITEI fined Víctor Merino de Jesús, the head of the Transparency Unit of Chapala during the 2018 – 2021 administration, for not delivering complete information regarding internal regulations, the Municipal Development Plan 2018 -2021 and the Social Prevention of the municipality.
Translated by Elisabeth Shields
Truck of the state prosecutor’s office of the state of Jalisco. Illustrative picture
Juan Gabriel «N» was arrested in San Nicolás de Ibarra on charges of domestic violence and aggravated injury. The arrest was made by members of the Jalisco District Attorney’s Office.
The man was captured when he was on Francisco I. Madero Street and Obregón Street in the town of San Nicolás de Ibarra, in Chapala. The arrest is related to events that were reported to the Prosecutor’s Office in 2021.
Translated by Kerry Watson
The vehicles came close to colliding head-on.
Once again there was an accident on the Guadalajara-Morelia highway on the El Molino – Jocotepec stretch, involving two vehicles that came close to colliding head-on.
The accident occurred during the morning of Sunday, January 23, and caused traffic chaos at the point where the highway changes from four to two narrow lanes, which are also in poor condition. Just a week before this collision, there was a serious accident in which three people lost their lives, including a two year old child.
Translated by Rebecca Zittle
Schools in the municipality are worried about the situation of contagions after the festivities of Señor del Monte. Photo: Courtesy.
Héctor Ruiz Mejía.- Covid contagions persist in the schools of the municipality of Jocotepec, after the second week of the return to classes, according to educational authorities.
It’s «worrying and difficult,” described Mayra Berenice García, director of the elementary school J. Vicente Negrete, located in the delegation of El Molina, where contagions among children have been increasing.
From the 70 percent attendance rate at the beginning of the week of January 17, the figure dropped to 50 percent for the second week, said the director.
Of the 300 children who make up the total student body, at least seven or eight tested positive for the coronavirus. The first grade classroom was the most affected and had to suspend classes for a week.
In addition, other children have presented respiratory symptoms; however, they don’t have access to COVID-19 tests, since these cost between 500 and 600 pesos and not many parents can afford them, so they have been considered as only suspected cases.
Therefore, according to the teacher, the number of infections among students is uncertain and although she expressed that the outlook for the next two weeks after the festivities is alarming, the Ministry of Education of Jalisco (SEJ) has been unyielding in its decision to return to the classroom.
«Unfortunately, to the educational authorities our opinion does not count, but at least we can demand that they do their job,» commented another of the directors, explaining that the sanitation protocol is deficient.
The teachers explained that, when a case is detected, it has to be reported to Health Region IV Ciénega-La Barca, which for federal zone 90 covers the towns of Nextipac, the municipal seat, Los Trojes, El Molino and San Luciano, among other delegations. But they never answer.
And when they do, they explained, the only answer is that classes cannot be suspended and that they have to continue with the same health protocols. The situation is further complicated by the fact that in El Molino the health system is almost null, as well as the testing system.
Since only three percent of the 300 children have some type of Social Security thanks to their parents, this means that only nine children in the entire school have decent access to health care.
Translated by Sandy Britton
There were no injuries in this accident that left a VW Jetta on its side
A red Volkswagen Jetta was left on its side in the bicycle lane after the driver, a 21-year-old man from San Antonio Tlayacapan, lost control of the vehicle during the night of Jan. 21.
The driver was unharmed. The vehicle was damaged and had to be towed away with a tow truck. Excessive speed may have been a factor in the accident.
Translated by Mike Rogers
Jocotepec’s downtown area gets a thorough cleaning
Héctor Ruiz Mejía.- After the end of Jocotepec’s patron saint festivities, the Government of Jocotepec began the task of «sanitation and cleaning.» The festivities, which are held in honor of the Lord of the Mount, lasted thirteen days and ended on January 17, 2022. As part of the cleanup, the streets Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez and Morelos were cleared of irregular vendors, and the main plaza received a thorough scrubbing.
This week saw City Hall workers cleaning up all kinds of mess, including what some residents identified as vomit, urine, food waste and alcohol, all left on the plaza. The festivities alone generated 25 tons of garbage during the 13 day period.
Translated by Rebecca Zittle
Altar in honor of Javier García Duarte.
Jazmín Stengel: A tireless fighter who made Chapala his town, Francisco Javier «El Rojo» García Duarte (October 18, 1952 to January 21, 2021) was a man of many facets and of strong character, in solidarity with education, politics and Chapala society.
Javier, at a very young age, began working in a photography store as a salesman in Guadalajara. Later a man hired him to help him retouch the negatives in the darkroom and it was there where he learned the trade that would accompany him for the rest of his life: photography.
At the age of 26 or 27, according to his daughter Yuridia’s calculations, Francisco Javier married Irma Laura Álvarez González, who was only a few years younger, and a few months after their marriage their first offspring appeared: Ulises.
During his wife’s pregnancy, Javier lost his job, a situation that led him to partner with his brother Pedro to buy Foto Estudio del Lago, in Chapala. After several years of commuting from Guadalajara, Javier decided to move his family to Chapala in 1980, Yuridia recalled.
From then on, García Duarte’s life changed, and his insatiable social struggle began. He continued with his photography, creating a pictorial record of the events that happened at Lakeside during his career. At the end of the 80’s he began working for the Preparatoria por Cooperación de Chapala, teaching Sociology, Philosophy, and World History, among others.
«He used to fail me, but he smiled at me,» said the current Chapala president Alejandro de Jesús Aguirre Curiel, who was his student in high school, along with other important political figures and former presidents of Chapala, such as Joaquín Huerta and Alberto Alcantar.
As a teacher Javier was known for lecturing the class and giving oral exams, so it was difficult for those who did not take notes, Aguirre Curiel recalls. But despite being strict he always kept to topics of common interest.
Javier García left the institution when it achieved regionalization in 1994, as he did not have documentation to validate his knowledge or the level of academic studies required by the University of Guadalajara. Even so, he supported the movement and continued teaching at the then Chapala Academy.
Up to that time, due to his strong character and way of understanding the system, he was given his nickname. “He was always tough, that’s why they called him ‘El Rojo’,» explained Professor David Castellanos, a former classmate of his. He remembers Javier as a revolutionary and enterprising person, who fought tirelessly, even against the tide.
A few years later, together with the birth of the regional newspaper ‘El Charal’, between 1996 and 1997, the first opinion columns of García, already known as «El Rojo», were made public under the title «Miscelánea Política» (Political Miscellany). In 1999, for personal reasons, he decided to move to Javier Raygoza’s weekly «Página que sí se lee…», creating his second column «Código Rojo» (Code Red).
«El Rojo» also made citizen denunciations, took pictures of things that from his point of view were wrong, and published them with the desire to point out the situation and to make a change for the benefit of society, but his forte was always the politics of opinion.
«Rojo’s job was to see the political background that events could have,» commented Gilberto Padilla, reporter for Página magazine. «He helped us to interpret what we did not see. In his ‘calumnies’ as he called them, between nicknames and sarcasm he had a unique way of saying things.
«He was a teacher. He helped me understand politics, the actors within it and how parties are managed from their guts,» Padilla recalled. Padilla wasn’t the only one of his apprentices. Rojo supported and helped all the reporters who approached him for advice.
Even politicians were not indifferent to chatting with «El Rojo,» since many of them, being his former students, made him their advisor. Like Alejandro Aguirre, who during his first government used to seek advice from the master Javier before making crucial decisions.
Being a photographer, columnist and political advisor, García returned to teaching in 2007, this time as a teacher at the Colegio Nacional de Educación Profesional Técnica (Conalep) Ajijic – Chapala. He undertook a struggle for the rights of education workers, as they were hired and fired without legal justification, explained Professor Antonio Flores, a teacher at the same institution.
As general secretary of Conalep Ajijic-Chapala at that time, Francisco Javier achieved, in 2009, the signing of the first collective contract for teachers with the educational body. In other words, he dignified the education workers. «They owe him their labor stability,» said Flores.
Despite it costing him his job in 2013, Garcia managed to regularize the teachers of an entire region, including the 19 Conalep school campuses that existed in Jalisco until that date, and to improve their working conditions, regardless of the confrontations with the authorities that this entailed.
After the corresponding lawsuit, the court ordered the restitution of his job position. However, since the debt that the institution was supposed to reimburse was not settled, Rojo preferred to desist. «For me, I was proud to share that part,» exclaimed Antonio Flores, a witness during the legal process of the trial.
On the other hand, the journalistic events of Lakeside took an unexpected turn. In 2011 Semanario Laguna was created and with it, the last column of Javier García Duarte, ‘Desde el Sofá del Rojo’, which was in force until his last publication, in December 2021, days before he was hospitalized.
Rojo was a bit irregular in his publications and always arrived at the closing of the edition at the last moment, but with the intention of bringing the topics as up-to-date as possible. This allowed him to intermittently make video reviews, published by La Voz de la Ribera under his own nickname «El Rojo.”
Unfortunately, in 2019, due to the evolution of cell phone cameras, the sales of hisphoto studio dropped to the point of having to close it. Then in June 2021, barely half a year after commemorating the ninth anniversary of the death of his youngest son Nestor, his wife Irma passed away, and Rojo was never the same again.
Even so, Rojo continued to be a warrior in the face of life, and once again advised Alejandro Aguirre Curiel on his path to the presidency, serving as director of Social Communication during the 2021 campaign. «Rojo was the first person to know that I was going to run as a candidate, hours before my unveiling,» said Aguirre as a sign of the great appreciation and trust he had for the maestro.
García Duarte was considered a person of high level in the political life of the municipality, since as the mayor said, «He always wanted good governments for Chapala.” This is turn led him to collaborate in his political career with all parties and colors of the municipality, despite being a leftist.
One bad day, Javier went down to his usual meeting with friends for coffee, freshly bathed and with his jacket open. “That day it was very cold,» which made Rojo sick, according to his daughter Yuridia.
From that day on, the lung disease that Javier had been carrying since his time as a teacher began to give him trouble, and worsened until he had to be hospitalized in the Community Hospital of Jocotepec, at the end of 2021.
Yuridia received her father’s discharge on January 7. However, the next day he relapsed and was transferred to Guadalajara where he passed away on January 21, 2021, leaving six grandchildren, two children and a great legacy.
Translated by Sandy Britton.
Calle Los Tulipanes with the new chain preventing passage, January 26.
Jazmín Stengel.– The streets that for a long time were privatized, were reopened to the public by personnel of the Municipality of Chapala, on Friday, January 21, causing annoyance among the neighbors of the Mirasol subdivision.
At the request of residents south of Riberas del Pilar, Chapala Mobility and municipal government personnel used heavy machinery to open the streets Los Lirios, Los Tulipanes and Tabachines of the subdivision, giving way to the general public. Las Malvas was the only street that was blocked due to some bushes that were planted on the site.
This action annoyed the neighbors of Mirasol. A group of 23 people protested in front of the municipal presidency on Monday, January 24. The demonstration ended with the signing of an official document between the protesters and the chief of staff, Joaquín Huerta, who attended to the complaints.
Mayor Alejandro de Jesús Aguirre Curiel promised to attend to the complainants personally in an appointment scheduled for next week, with a date still pending.
Even so, the neighbors of the Mirasol subdivision ignored the change and put back the chains that had been blocking the parallel streets of Los Lirios and Los Tulipanes. The land at the end of Mirasol Street remains fenced off. The only street that stayed open to the public until January 26th was Tabachines Street, which ends at a construction site.
The protesters confirmed that they demanded the government repair the three streets surrounding the subdivision, so that the inhabitants of Riberas can use those streets and they can close the aforementioned ones again, alleging their «right of use and customs due to their seniority,» stated one of the complainants. However, the latter is not possible, since within the legal framework the roads are public and to restrict them would be privatization.
Translated by Sydney Metrick
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