Category: Culture

In the fall of 2003, archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez arrived at work after a heavy rainstorm to find a sinkhole had opened at the foot of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacán.

The three-foot-wide collapse was an accident that led to one of the most significant discoveries of his career: a tunnel system that ran hundreds of feet below the pyramid. But today, what Gómez Chávez sees when he looks at the same temple is not just an opportunity for discovery, but the slow, steady disintegration of the building itself. He now warns that the structure could disappear almost entirely within a century.

The Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacán, also known as the Temple of Quetzalcóatl, is the third-largest pyramid at Teotihuacán, a Prehispanic archaeological site located in central Mexico. Built between 150 and 200 CE, the pyramid consists of seven stepped bodies with a talud-tablero architectural style and features one of the most complex sculptural programs of its time. 

The pyramid in Teotihuacán takes its name from the numerous representations of the feathered serpent deity that cover its sides, which are among the earliest-known depictions of a figure later associated with the Aztec (Mexica) god Quetzalcoatl. 

The four sides of the structure were originally covered in stone reliefs depicting multi-colored feathered serpents that appear to slide among seashells. Alternating with the serpent heads are large sculptures of a separate figure with prominent fangs and two rings on its forehead, which some researchers have interpreted as the rain god Tlaloc or other deities.

The pyramid was originally hidden behind a later construction known as the Adosada platform, and the sculptures that were once visible were intentionally destroyed or covered, a fact that paradoxically helped preserve the rest. The temple also sits within the Ciudadela, a massive walled courtyard capable of holding the estimated 100,000 inhabitants of Teotihuacán at its peak.

In May 2026, Gómez Chávez told La Jornada that the Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacán “could cease to exist in about 100 years” due to “very severe” damage. The primary cause of the deterioration is moisture accumulation. Studies conducted with scanning electron microscopes have revealed that the stone is in a critical process of disintegration and sandification. 

The moisture penetrates the subsoil and then rises into the structure through capillary action, fracturing the stone and causing it to lose its cohesion. Temperature fluctuations in the region, ranging from freezing to over 30 degrees Celsius in a single day, exacerbate the problem, as do constant humidity levels around 65%. The damage is not always visible to the naked eye, but particles of the original material are now detaching from the temple daily.

The origins of the moisture problem are partly modern. Gómez Chávez noted that when Manuel Gamio first excavated the temple in Teotihuacán in the 1910s, he altered the original platform structure, creating openings that allowed water to filter into the subsoil. The tunnel discovered beneath the temple in 2003 has also become an entry point for humidity. Further compounding the problem, conservation interventions in the 1940s and 1980s inadvertently damaged the stone. In the 1980s, a chemical product was applied to the facade to protect it, but it instead accelerated the stone’s deterioration.

An international competition was held to evaluate proposals, and one was selected, but it was the cheapest option and did not actually solve the underlying problem. Gómez Chávez told La Jornada that the project was evaluated, postponed, and ultimately forgotten as administrations changed at the National Institute of Anthropology and History. 

“We have taken photographs with scanning electron microscopes, where you can see that the stone is completely disintegrated—that is, turned to sand. For this reason, we called attention to the need to address this problem,” Gómez Chávez said. “An international competition was held where many proposals were presented, of which one was selected that did not solve the problem, but it was the cheapest; the issue is that nothing has been done yet; the temple continues to be damaged, and the deterioration process cannot be stopped”.

In October 2024, the INAH and its board launched a campaign called “Let’s Save the Feathered Serpent Pyramid” to raise funds for a fluoropolymer roof over the west facade. The roof would cover 700 square meters. But even that effort remains preliminary, with the INAH stating that studies of soil mechanics and other projections are still required before any installation can take place. 

Gómez Chávez has noted that the solution he proposed was to cover only the facade, discreetly, restoring the building’s original shape. But bureaucratic inertia has left the temple exposed. “The solution that was proposed some time ago, to reduce the temple’s deterioration, was to place a roof; the project was evaluated, postponed, and finally forgotten as administrations changed at the National Institute of Anthropology and History,” he said.

Before Oskar Schindler became a household name, a Mexican diplomat in southern France was quietly doing something just as extraordinary — and the world barely noticed for 60 years.

Gilberto Bosques Saldívar was born in 1892 in Chiautla de Tapia, Puebla, in a mountainous region southeast of Mexico City. He fought in the Mexican Revolution at 17, went on to become a journalist, a schoolteacher, a state legislator, and twice a federal deputy. In 1938, President Lázaro Cárdenas appointed him Consul General in Paris.

When Nazi Germany swept into France in May 1940, Bosques fled Paris with the rest of the diplomatic corps. His government instructed him to set up a new consulate in Marseille, in what would become the German-controlled puppet state known as Vichy France. That relocation put him at the center of one of the worst refugee crises in modern history — and he made the most of it.

Visas for Everyone

Bosques ordered his consulate staff to issue a Mexican visa to anyone who needed one to escape. Jews fleeing the Third Reich, Spanish Republicans driven out by Francisco Franco’s forces after the Spanish Civil War, French political dissidents, Italians, Lebanese — all were eligible. Under his watch, roughly 40,000 visas were issued.

He didn’t stop there. Bosques rented two châteaux outside Marseille to shelter the refugees under what he claimed, under international law, was Mexican territory. He chartered ships to carry people out of Europe, routed through African ports and on to Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil. He personally lobbied both President Cárdenas and his successor, Manuel Ávila Camacho, to keep the doors open.

The consulate operated under constant surveillance. The Gestapo, Vichy police, and Franco’s agents all monitored its activities. In February 1943, after Mexico cut ties with the Vichy regime, German forces moved in as the staff was still burning files. Bosques, his wife, their 3 children, and about 40 consular employees were arrested and transferred to a hotel-prison in Bad Godesberg, near Bonn, where they were held for more than a year.

Mexico negotiated their release in 1944, arranging a prisoner exchange that freed Bosques and his team in return for German nationals held in Mexico. When Bosques arrived back in Mexico City by train, thousands of Spanish refugees were waiting at the station to greet him.

Recognition, Long Overdue

Bosques returned to diplomatic work after the war, serving as ambassador to Portugal, Finland, Sweden, and Cuba. He lived to 102 — dying in 1995, just days before his 103rd birthday. His wartime role went largely unacknowledged for decades, even within academic circles.

The turnaround began in 2003, when the city of Vienna named a street in his honor: the Gilberto-Bosques-Promenade, in recognition of his efforts to help Austrian refugees. In 2008, the Anti-Defamation League presented his family with a posthumous Courage to Care Award at a ceremony in Beverly Hills, California. A documentary, “Visa to Paradise,” followed in 2010.

Today, he is often called the “Mexican Schindler,” a comparison to industrialist Oskar Schindler, though historians note that Bosques operated on a larger scale and with the backing — if sometimes just barely — of his government. Scholars continue to debate how much of his work was truly independent action versus official Mexican foreign policy. What is not debated is the outcome.

Mexico’s role in World War II extended well beyond the consulate in Marseille. The country sent combat pilots to the Pacific theater and was the first in the world to formally protest Germany’s annexation of Austria. As covered in Mexico’s WWII role, the nation’s contributions to the Allied effort remain underappreciated outside Latin America.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum describes Bosques as having saved tens of thousands of lives. For context on how few others did the same, the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation — which has honored Bosques alongside Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara — notes that such acts of defiance were vanishingly rare among diplomats of the era.

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At a Glance: Gilberto Bosques Saldívar

• Born: July 20, 1892, Chiautla de Tapia, Puebla, Mexico
• Died: July 4, 1995, age 102
• Role: Consul General of Mexico in Marseille, France, 1939–1943
• Visas issued: Approximately 40,000
• Refugees sheltered: Jews, Spanish Republicans, French, Italians, Lebanese, and others
• Arrested by the Gestapo: February 1943; held near Bonn for over a year
• Released: April 1944 via prisoner exchange
• Honors: Vienna street named in his honor (2003); ADL Courage to Care Award (2008, posthumous)
• Documentary: “Visa to Paradise” (Visa al paraíso), 2010
• Nickname: “The Mexican Schindler”

Mexico’s official school calendar has handed families a generous stretch of days off in early May, and a lot of people are quietly turning it into a six-day megapuente — even if the government only signed off on part of it.

In Mexico, a puente (literally, “bridge”) is what happens when a public holiday lands close enough to a weekend that families and workers can stitch the two together into an extended break. May offers an unusually good opportunity for that.

The Secretaría de Educación Pública, the federal education ministry known as the SEP, publishes a binding school calendar each year that governs public schools at the preschool, primary, and secondary levels. This year, two official holidays fall within days of each other in early May — and the timing is hard to ignore.

The Megapuente Begins

May 1 is Labor Day, or Día del Trabajo, a mandatory national holiday enshrined in the Ley Federal del Trabajo. This year it lands on a Friday. Combined with the weekend that follows, that’s already four consecutive days without school.

Then comes May 5. Commemorating the Mexican army’s surprise defeat of French forces at the Battle of Puebla in 1862, Cinco de Mayo is an official school holiday — though, as many visitors to Mexico quickly discover, it is observed far more enthusiastically north of the border than in Mexico itself. This year it falls on a Tuesday, which puts it right up against that long weekend.

That leaves Monday, May 4, as the only thing standing between a four-day break and a six-day one. The SEP’s official calendar marks May 4 in bold, indicating a day of reflection and civic commemoration — but not an official suspension of classes. Many families take it off anyway.

April 30, Día del Niño (Children’s Day), adds one more unofficial wild card. Schools often use the date for parties and special events, and attendance tends to be loosely enforced. Some families treat it as the informal start of the whole stretch.

So the practical picture: if a family pulls their kids from school on April 30, takes the Labor Day weekend, skips Monday the 4th, and observes Cinco de Mayo, they get six consecutive days off. Whether that’s a megapuente or just creative scheduling depends on who you ask — and whether the school notices.

The month doesn’t end there. May 15 is Día del Maestro, Teacher’s Day, when classes are officially suspended at the basic education level across Mexico to honor the country’s teachers.

For expats and foreign residents with children enrolled in Mexican schools, the SEP school calendar is worth bookmarking. Private schools sometimes follow a modified version, so it’s worth checking with individual institutions about which dates apply.

May 2026 School Breaks at a Glance

• April 30 — Día del Niño; informal, not an official suspension; many schools hold events or allow children to skip
• May 1 — Labor Day (Día del Trabajo); mandatory national holiday; falls on Friday
• May 2–3 — Weekend
• May 4 — No official suspension; listed as a day of civic reflection on the SEP calendar; many families treat it as a holiday
• May 5 — Cinco de Mayo; official school holiday commemorating the Battle of Puebla; falls on Tuesday
• May 15 — Teacher’s Day (Día del Maestro); official suspension of basic-level classes

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has announced the discovery of a large-scale pre-Hispanic Maya city in the municipality of Othón P. Blanco, in the southern state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. The site, known as “El Jefeciño” (roughly translating to “The Little Boss”.

The discovery of the site, nicknamed El Jefeciño, or “little boss,” came after a citizen report during the initial surveys for the Maya Train archaeological salvage project.

Scale and Architecture

According to the statement released by INAH, El Jefeciño is a site of monumental architecture comprising at least 80 structures distributed across an area of approximately 100 hectares. Officials note, however, that the extension could be considerably larger and that exploration is ongoing. 

The architecture corresponds to the Petén style, typically dated to the Early and Late Classic periods (250–900 A.D.). This style features large vaulted buildings, rounded and recessed corners, and the presence of sloping stonework.

Archaeologists Sonny Moisés Ojeda González (head of the Dzibanché Kinichná Archaeological Zone) and Diana Karina Blancas Olvera (head of the Kohunlich zone) served as co-directors of the site’s initial prospection. They identified a specific “nuclear area” within the larger hectare count, consisting of five major buildings. These structures range in height from 11 to 14 meters and measure between 16 and 40 meters in length, arranged in a “C” shape plaza formation.

Murals and Human Remains

While the site requires more exploration, researchers have already documented significant features in specific structures. In a building cataloged as No. 53035, located in the northeast section of the property, archaeologists discovered painted stucco reliefs. 

Unlike the narrative murals found at sites like Bonampak, the painting at El Jefeciño is described as “decorative and not narrative.” The visible pigments include white, orange, and red stripes. Adjacent to these mural fragments, researchers also identified fragments of a human skeleton, which they theorize may be part of a funerary context or burial.

Ojeda González explained that within this section of the site, the team identified three distinct construction stages through surface observation. The first and deepest layer (approximately eight meters down) features the classic Petén apron molding. The second layer corresponds to the mural painting remains, while the third layer is mostly collapsed. Based on the size of the buildings, the specialists infer that the structures likely contain between four and five total construction phases.

Conservation Status and Methodology

In a crucial clarification for the archaeological community, the INAH specialists emphasized that the work conducted so far constitutes registration and prospection, not a salvage excavation. No in-depth analysis or recovery of the materials (including the mural and bones) has been conducted. The evidence is currently designated to remain in situ (in its original place) to preserve the context until a formal excavation project is approved.

Future Research

The site’s discovery was facilitated by the Proyecto de Salvamento Arqueológico Tren Maya (Maya Train Archaeological Salvage Project), coordinated by archaeologist Manuel Pérez Rivas, specifically along front 1 of Section 7.

Looking ahead, the INAH team plans to request a mapping project utilizing LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology. This laser-based remote sensing method has become indispensable in the dense jungles of Quintana Roo, as it allows archaeologists to define the settlement pattern and confirm the full extent of the structures without physical excavation.

Secretary of Culture Claudia Curiel de Icaza stated that the registration of El Jefeciño, “Working with INAH strengthens the protection of archaeological heritage and expands knowledge about the Maya presence in southern Quintana Roo,” while also recognizing the role of local communities in safeguarding the historical memory.