The Mazatlan Grapevine
By: Greg Brady
 The first of the year 2008 saw the entry of the new mayor, Jorge Abel Sanchez Lopez, and his incoming administrative team. Jorge Abel, as he likes to be called, is not only known as el alcalde, or mayor, he also bears the title of el presidente municipal, that is, president of the greater Mazatlan municipality, akin to a county, which includes Villa Union to the south and La Noria to the north, also many outlying ranchos, rural settlements, such as the birthplace of banda music, El Recodo.
 The popular Jorge Abel’s appointee to the office of Director of the Municipal Institute of Culture, Tourism and Art is José Luis Franco Rodríguez, alias Pepe Franco, who is a well known local writer, professor of literature and progenitor of the annual springtime book fair La Feria de Libros. He is faced with the Herculean task of managing this year’s Carnaval, one of the world’s largest, on very short notice: it starts exceptionally early this year, on January 31st. He remains confident that it can be done, saying, “We are going to have a good Carnaval, we are advancing at the pace of a forced march, but we have a team that works very well together, so everything will be fine, just like other years.”
 A good sign of more cooperation in the future between Mazatlan and the Governor Jesus Aguilar’s office in Culiacan: his first week in charge, Jorge Abel asked for and received a hefty loan from the State of Sinaloa to help defray civic operating expenses until the municipal treasury revives from the transition of power. Explains Jorge Abel, “We showed the Governor the real situation in Mazatlan with respect to finances, and we were assured by the State government that it would advance the necessary funds to meet the more urgent outlays, such as workers’ salaries and payments to providers.” Maybe having a Mayor who belongs to the PRI, the same political party that has long held the Governor’s office, will bring more blessings our way.
January is a time when price hikes traditionally rear their unwelcome heads, and 2008 is no exception. The postponed rise in gasoline prices went into effect the first weekend of the year, and when gas goes up, can everything else, from construction materials to groceries, be far behind? Actually, the new tax is being added slowly at a rate of a couple of centavos a liter per month to make the change more palatable (and less noticeable) to consumers. Of course, what do you expect gasoline prices to do, go down? Mercifully, Mexico’s overall inflation rate has been quite low and stable for the last decade.
A big holiday down here is January 6th, Día de Reyes, celebrating the night that the three kings Baltazar, Gaspar and Melchor followed the shining star that led them to the crib of baby Jesus. The main festive activity associated with the Day of Kings is getting together, exchanging gifts and eating rosca, a dense and delicious cake. The new presidenta of family agency DIF Mazatán, the handsome Mayor’s lovely wife Perla Sarmiento de Lopez, kicked off her regime’s first week with an impressive feat of baking: a rosca 500 meters long was unveiled and passed out to the public along with two thousand presents for the throngs of children, on Sunday January 6th at the DIF-sponsored Festival del Día de Reyes, held at the City’s beautiful woodland park, El Bosque de la Ciudad. If you’ve never been there, (it’s around the corner from the Acuario), you really should check it out: acres of trees, lots of playground equipment, a “train” that runs around the perimeter, and a small zoo featuring an infant jaguar, an ocelot and a rather curious looking cat known as an onxa, and let’s not forget the deer and the hairy pig known as a jabalí. Admission is free!
Mazatlan’s Acuario continues to improve. Last year saw the construction of a new sea wolf tank, so that the sea wolves (or sea lions, just don’t call them seals!) can be viewed between performances. The latest addition to the Acuario’s many attractions is a golden 8 meter statue of Neptune (the Roman name for the Greek sea god Poseidon), in keeping with Mazatlan’s famous tradition of displaying classically influenced sculpture. It was fabricated with a combination of fiberglass and metals by internationally recognized Mazatlecan artist Luis Zúñiga García, and can be seen all the way from the malecón seawalk.
That’s all for now
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