Dear Sir,
Your newspaper has carried a series of articles about the Chapala Municipality’s plans to stimulate growth and development in the tourism sector.
We have detected a certain slant of boosterism in these stories, which has seen the plans of the current government to be presented to the public without a full exploration of the potential negatives of the growth. While we understand the difficulty that local government authorities have in juggling the desires of investors and the need for job creation with the environmental considerations — both real and ambient — we so wish that The Reporter would dig a little deeper. For example, no one can explain to anyone’s satisfaction just who allowed the ugly, deep and permanent scarring of one of our region’s lushly vegetated mountains, the one we all openly mourn each time we drive onto the libramiento. Without such knowledge of who permitted this monstrosity to become a reality, to whom do we comfortably entrust future municipal planning, tourism or otherwise? Our Mexican friends get nervous when these questions are asked and there seems to be not one brave soul who is willing to say, “Sr. Moneybags requested it and it was approved by President Exact-name.” More, who has allowed the horrid construction on the Ajijic pier? It is new construction, but it nevertheless looks like someone took a chunk of an 80s-era Tucson strip mall and screwed it onto the edge. Before this blight was exacted, young men could enjoy the morning hours on the pier, watching the sunrise with their fishing poles in the water. No more, though, as the unnecessarily-tall building completely blocks both the sun and the view to the east, and the morning ambiance of the pier now offers all the cheer of a former Soviet-bloc country. While we have heard that the pier has a federal designation, no one can convince us that the same powers who approved the desecration of the mountain could not somehow enact a proper clearing of Ajijic’s pier. Please, help us implement good governance in the planning decisions on these increasingly stressed shores of Lake Chapala by centering your reporting on who the willfully ignorant and/or opportunistic actors are, and have been, before they ruin one of Mexico’s invaluable and precious locales. More than ever before, we need the lights shining brightly in those back-room corners.
Alice Hudson, Ajijic
Dear Sir,
The photo of the dog on the front page of the April 16-22nd edition is cute, but not funny. The first part of January 2016, after seeing posters about dogs needing to be on leashes, picked up after, etc., I made a list of 18 residences whose doggy inhabitants roamed the streets barking, pooping, tearing into trash bags, etc. The ecology director was in his office when I submitted my list. He seemed to appreciate the effort I was making to improve my neighborhood. Without any noticeable changes, I returned in the first part of March to submit my list once again. At that time a long-time friend of my husband’s, who appears to move from office to office, and empty chair to empty chair at city hall, told me that the municipality didn’t have a place to keep dogs. I assured him that every dog on the list had a home. The only thing that needed to be done was call on the owner’s, or leave a note on the door, asking them to obey the animal ordinances in place. Now we are nearing a new month and all remains the same.
PRI in office, we are still happy with PAN and CIRCO.
Nanette Phillips
San Antonio Tlayacapan