I Just Saw a "Zanate"

Zanate is known to scientists as:

Quiscalus mexicanus

There are plenty of them on campus here in Chilpancingo.


Also my beloved cousins were known with that name around here, because of their dark complexion. Oscar Ezequiel, Jorge, and Salvador.

On Friday I was invited by University of Guerrero students to talk about Astronomy to their peers in "Casa del Estudiante Guerrerense #1", (Guerrero Student House #1), downtown Chilpancingo. Before me, Dr. Gildardo Valencia Miranda talked to them. He knew my aunt Dora Uriza Castro, and her husband Ezequiel Apáez. Dr. Valencia has worked in Guerrero all his life, he even was in the Government on his capacity as a physician. Searching for him on the Internet, I think I found one of his sons, Dr. Gildardo Valencia Salazar, a Mexican scientist that proved, together with other scientists, in 2006 the ill effects of pollution on Mexico City children. In this paper one can read that Nobel Prize winner Frank Sherwood Rowland also studied the air quality of Mexico City in 1995.

The paper by Calderón-Garcidueñas et al. that Dr. Valencia is a co-author of, looked into children from the same neighborhood and age as my dear niece Coral. It pains my heart to think that she was exposed to those levels of pollution. Fortunately for her, her parents travel, and she might have not been affected as much as the girls and boys studied; they stayed around in that area. My own son lived far away from that pollution, he is the same age, but we moved him far away from the noxious environment of South West Mexico City, SWMC as the scientists of that article call that place. My wife, being American, told me in no-uncertain terms when she saw Mexico City for the first time, I don't want to live here. When in Mexico, we lived in the more easy going City of Puebla.


"The frequencies of both hyperinflation and interstitial markings were significantly higher in Mexico City children, indicating an association of hyperinflation and interstitial markings with residence in Mexico City."

"Consequently, any factors that alter airway growth during childhood are likely to affect adult lung function (Stick 2000). Thus, these children exposed to significant concentrations of air pollutants potentially have an altered alveolar development and suffer adverse effects on lung function growth, similar to that experienced by children in Southern California (Gauderman
et al. 2004)."

"We have found an association between chronic exposures to severe urban air pollution and a significant increase in abnormal CXRs and lung CTs, suggestive of a bronchiolar, peribronchiolar, and/or alveolar duct inflammatory process, in clinically healthy children with no risk factors for lung disease."

That is the scientific way the findings are reported in this article.

A similar study was done previously on Mexico City dogs. They did not fare better than our kids.

"The pathology observed in Mexico City children and dogs is likely related to exposure to O₃ and PM, which are known to target respiratory bronchioles."

Dr. Valencia was telling the young people in the audience that the best gift their parents could give them is a university career. He said that they have to study hard to earn the privilege to be a professional in Mexico, otherwise they would have to work hard and get little pay.

Two of my cousins are dead, Oscar, and Jorge. I just went to the cemetery here in Chilpancingo today to pay them a visit, and drop one or two tears.

Only one "zanate" is alive, cousin Chava, he is a Veterinarian working in Guanajuato State, Mexico.


It is interesting to have this series of "accidents" happening to me in just one weekend. Both the completely unexpected encounter with Dr. Valencia, and the zanate walking on the roof of the building in front of my office earlier today, serve as a good preamble of what is in my mind right now.

Both cousins died young. I loved them. They bring memories to my mind. As I walked through town today more thoughts crossed my mind, some related, some not. Here is what I want to write.

We only know of intelligent life on this planet. Nowhere else, where we have looked, is there something like it. That means that every human being is sacred, nevertheless we don't act that way. If the price of gold goes to two thousand dollars an ounce, as some analysts predict. The 340 thousand onces expected for next year in Guerrero state are worth seven billion dollars. Neverhteless this is one of the poorest states of Mexico. How could that be?

The rich people with the gold prospects, don't think every human baby born in the Indian towns of the State of Guerrero, is a sacred gift from the evolution of the Universe. Over thirteen and a half billion years ago, that baby's atoms were created. A long and special process leads to that special baby. Why then, those rich people don't want to invest their gold in him?

One reason I can think of, is ignorance. Those rich gold diggers don't know the story of our Universe, they did not spend their time studying, they have been digging gold for a long time, that is why they are good at it.

Why did President Felipe Calderón left over forty thousand electric workers unemployed?

Why does not President Obama decree an end to the Cuban embargo?

Why don't some of my readers agree with what I write here?

I have plausible answers for these questions, but it is more important to write here, that we are running out of time.

Gabriel García Márquez wrote a masterpiece of the Spanish Language, "One Hundred Years of Solitude", one can read:

20. As Aureliano reads the words of Melquíades, he finds that the text is at that very moment mirroring his own life, describing his act of reading as he reads. And around him, an apocalyptic wind swirls, ripping the town from its foundations, erasing it from memory.

Taken from:

Literapedia

"Porque las estirpes condenadas a cien años de soledad no tienen una segunda oportunidad sobre la tierra"

". . . for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth."

Taken from:

On Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude