Daily coronavirus briefing: How wildfire smoke may be spreading cases
Experts say wildfire smoke could be “an additional vehicle for spreading the virus even faster.” Plus, a top doctor blasts his own country’s handling of the pandemic, as less than 3% of the population is vaccinated.
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The latest surge of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is mostly in the unvaccinated, especially children who aren’t eligible. With school about to begin, there is debate about how to protect them.1 HOUR AGO
Former FDA chief expects coronavirus to become an ‘endemic’ virus
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The frozen ground in Siberia continues to burn, tearing through more than 3.7 million acres of forest.
Santa Claus isn’t supposed to see smoke. For the first time in recorded history, hazy smoke from raging wildfires in the Arctic has reached the North Pole, and NASA satellites have the images to prove it.
On Aug. 6, the space agency’s MODIS, an imaging sensor on the Aqua satellite, captured true-color images of what NASA called a “vast, thick, and acrid blanket of smoke” that clouded the North Pole. The smoke originated from enormous blazes in the Siberian region of northern Russia.
According to China’s Xinhua news agency, the Mongolian capital city of Ulaanbaatar was blanketed in “white smoke,” NPR reported. The republic of Yakutia – home to Oymyakon,the coldest inhabited…
With the population declining, First Nations, environmentalists, and others are working together to safeguard boreal caribou — and their habitat — before it’s too lateBy Amy van den Berg – Published on Aug 05, 2021
The boreal caribou is considered a threatened species in Ontario. (iStock/mirceax)
The forestry sector calls it the Abitibi River Forest: more than 3 million hectares of land near Cochrane that extend to just south of James Bay and hug the Ontario-Quebec border. It is dominated by towering stands of black and white spruce, scraggy jack pine, and tamarack that turn golden yellow in the fall. It is also home to the North French watershed, one of the last sources of clean drinking water left in this part of the province.
Nearly a decade ago, 492 boreal caribou roamed the area, which forms part of the Kesagami range. Even then, though, the population was classified as “not self-sustaining,” as its habitat — caribou need large and undisturbed swathes of old coniferous forest or peatland to survive — had been disturbed by both natural and human forces. While it’s unclear how many remain, experts believe their numbers continue to shrink, and the species is considered threatened in the province.
Enter the Made in the North Caribou Plan, also known as the Cochrane Plan. It was devised eight years ago by a group made up of environmentalists, forestry representatives, and First Nations. It brings together local communities and, more recently, the province’s forest-management planning team to protect the health of woodland caribou — and prevent further degradation of their habitat. If the collaboration succeeds, experts say, its cross-sector approach could act as a blueprint for similar efforts across the country. But, they warn, it won’t be easy: the project is unfolding against a backdrop of environmental deregulation that could hinder conservation efforts.
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Caribou in North America have lost more than half of their historic range. (Ted Simonett, Wildlands League)
Caribou herds, which live in areas of the boreal forest stretching from Labrador to Yukon, are in peril across the country. “Basically, almost every boreal caribou population that lives in managed forests in Canada is in decline,” says Julee Boan, a Thunder Bay-based boreal-program manager at Ontario Nature, a registered charity dedicated to conservation. While human activity is the most significant cause of habitat loss, forest fires have also damaged caribou ranges across the province’s north. To date, caribou in North America have lost more than half of their historic range.
Joe Bennett, an associate professor at Carleton University who specializes in conservation and threatened species, says that “Canadians have often taken for granted that we have this supposed wilderness and that we’re a nation of forests. The reality is that we have disturbed our boreal forests quite a lot, especially in certain areas, and this has led to threats to species such as boreal caribou.”
Threats include industrial-resource-extraction activities — such as logging, mining, and those related to oil and gas — and hydroelectricity. These industries cut roads through the forest, opening the landscape to larger numbers of moose and deer and therefore also to more predators, such as wolves and bears. Climate change, too, plays a part. It’s causing white-tailed deer to move northward: they help boost the wolf population and can carry the brainworm parasite, which is lethal to caribou.
In 2008, Ontario developed a recovery strategy and habitat-guidance documents for caribou that include a range-management approach to evaluating disturbances: this involves working to support caribou habitat health — for example, by not harvesting in areas where a certain percentage of a range has already been affected. Provincial forestry guidelines are aimed at minimizing the harm to caribou and their habitat and include renaturalizing logging roads and avoiding calving areas.
The federal government in 2012 produced a recovery strategy that labelled 37 of 51 caribou populations in Canada not self-sustaining. There has not, though, been continuous monitoring since — which makes understanding Ontario’s situation difficult. “Caribou are very difficult and expensive to survey,” Ray says. “And in order to know how caribou are doing, you have to take good looks at their population on a regular basis.”
The Cochrane Plan was formed in 2013 to fill the void. It is co-led by Wildlands League, a non-profit environmental organization; Rayonier Advanced Materials Lumber, which operates a local sawmill; Taykwa Tagamou and Moose Cree First Nations; and Cochrane itself. Moose Cree is working with the federal government to establish an Indigenous protected area in the North French watershed, in part to conserve caribou habitat.
“When you come to the table and you’re collaborative, you can solve these things,” says Anna Baggio, director of conservation planning for Wildlands League. “It’s a good mindset.”
The partnership was the first of its kind in Ontario and one of only a handful of similar joint efforts across Canada.
Because caribou are found in the northern section of the Abitibi River Forest planning area, the members proposed a system of zoned logging that sets aside 800,000 hectares of caribou habitat and leaves 2.2 million hectares for varying levels of forestry. Put simply: harvest more trees along the area’s southern region, harvest moderately in the middle, and leave the northern edge of the forest alone.
“Part of our thinking is that we can’t restore the southern part of that range, because it’s so heavily developed, so let’s not make the range worse by moving development to the far northern part,” says Baggio.
Members of the Cochrane Plan work to raise awareness of the need to protect the region’s critical caribou habitat. (Courtesy of Wildlands League)
Last December, the province’s forest-management-planning team agreed, after consultation with the Cochrane Plan, not to place cut blocks — areas authorized for harvesting — in the northern section of the caribou range for at least the next 20 years. “It’s not perfect,” says Baggio. “But it buys us critical time to put in place a long-term plan.”
Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, passed in 2007, was once considered the strongest such legislation in Canada. Under the ESA, the habitat of any species classified as endangered or threatened would receive automatic legal protection. “It was a very strong act, but it’s been weakened over the years in various ways,” says Ray.
In an email to TVO.org, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry says, “Forest management plans are developed using a planning manual regulated under the Crown Forest Sustainability Act (CFSA). The FMPM requires the application of MNRF’s approved forest management guides to provide for protection to values, including species at risk.”
But advocates say the guidelines under the Crown Forest Sustainability Act are not comparable to those in the Endangered Species Act. “The purpose of the two acts is distinctly different,” says Boan. While the CFSA’s rules for forestry attempt to minimize logging’s impact on the habitat of species at risk, the ESA aims to help populations recover. “Recovery is the key aspect.”
Advocates have also criticized the government’s changes to environmental-assessment and public-consultation processes. And, while the province indicated in its “Forest Sector Strategy,” launched in August 2020, that the current volume of timber harvested is less than 60 per cent of what it was in 2000, that same strategy suggests doubling the amount of logging on Crown land by 2030. “Combined, they’ve created an environment of deregulation,” says Boan. “And it’s going to put caribou at more risk.”
“We’re not going to be able to get a lot of this habitat back for caribou — this is just not possible,” says Baggio, from Wildlands League. The organization is calling for a halt on the expansion of the industrial footprint in caribou habitat that have already experienced 35 per cent disturbance.
The Cochrane Plan also wants the province to step in and permanently protect the caribou habitat within the Abitibi River Forest. “What’s been happening locally so far, I think that’s a good sign,” Baggio says. “What we’d like [Ontario] to do is go one step further and really try and figure out a way to come up with a long-term strategy so that the forest companies will know where to go to operate.”
In the meantime, the group is urging other companies to avoid the area: it’s still open to other activities, such as mineral and gas exploration. And many caribou populations move between ranges; although the federal Species at Risk Act encourages provinces and territories to implement range plans to ensure critical habitat remains 65 per cent undisturbed, Ontario has not yet done so.
Experts say, though, that such voluntary initiatives will not be enough for Ontario’s caribou. “It’s important to have [them], like what’s happening in the northeast,” says Boan. “But that’s not happening everywhere. And more deregulation isn’t going to help.”
Despite the roadblocks, Baggio is heartened by how many people are taking up the cause: “It just takes more political will, more ambition, and more leadership.”
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Most experts agree it depends on the species, but much evidence shows large mammals suffer under even the best human care.
By Cody CottierAug 7, 2021 12:00 PM(Credit: DN Cherry/Shutterstock)
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For much of the past year and a half, many of us felt like captives. Confined mostly within monotonous walls, unable to act out our full range of natural behavior, we suffered from stress and anxiety on a massive scale. In other words, says Bob Jacobs, a neuroscientist at Colorado College, the pandemic gave us a brief taste of life as lived by many animals.
Though anthropomorphism is always suspect, Jacobs observes that “some humans were quite frustrated by all that.” This is no surprise — we understand the strain of captivity as we experience it. But how do animals fare under the same circumstances? Putting aside the billions of domesticated livestock around the world, some 800,000 wild or captive-born animals reside in accredited American zoos and aquariums alone. Many people cherish these institutions, many abhor them. All want to know: Are the creatures inside happy?
Signs of Stress
Happiness is hard to judge empirically, but scientists do attempt to quantify welfare by measuring chronic stress, which can arise as a result of restricted movement, contact with humans and many other factors. The condition reveals itself through high concentrations of stress hormones in an animal’s blood. These hormones, called glucocorticoids, have been correlated with everything from hair loss in polar bears to reproductive failure in black rhinos. about:blankabout:blank
That said, it’s difficult to say what a normal level of stress is for any given animal. An obvious baseline is the captive’s wild counterpart (which surely has its own troubles, from predation to starvation). But the problem, says Michael Romero, a biologist at Tufts University, “is that there’s just not enough data.” Given the challenge of measuring a wild animal’s stress — the requisite capture isn’t exactly calming — few such studies have been undertaken, especially on large animals.
Besides, hormones may be an imperfect gauge of how agitated an animal really feels. “Stress is so complicated,” Romero says. “It’s not as well characterized as people think.” So researchers can also look for its more visible side effects. Chronic stress weakens the immune system, for example, leading to higher disease rates in many animals. Opportunistic fungal infections are the leading cause of death in captive Humboldt penguins, and perhaps 40 percent of captive African elephants suffer from obesity, which in turn increases their risk of heart disease and arthritis.
Even when breeding does succeed, high infant mortality rates plague some species, and many animals that reach adulthood die far younger than they would in the wild. The trend is especially poignant in orcas — according to one study, they survive just 12 years on average in American zoos; males in the wild typically live 30 years, and females 50.
Big Brains, Big Needs
Our wild charges don’t all suffer so greatly. Even in the above species there seems to be some variability among individuals, and others seem quite comfortable in human custody. “Captive animals are often healthier, longer-lived and more fecund,” writes Georgia Mason, a behavioral biologist at the University of Ontario. “But for some species the opposite is true.” about:blankabout:blank
Romero emphasized the same point in a 2019 paper: the effect of captivity is, ultimately, “highly species-specific.” In many ways it depends on the complexity of each species’ brain and social structure. One decent rule of thumb is that the larger the animal, the worse it will adjust to captivity. Thus the elephant and the cetacean (whales, dolphins and porpoises) have become the poster children of the welfare movement for zoo animals.
Jacobs, who studies the brains of elephants, cetaceans and other large mammals, has described the caging of these creatures as a form of “neural cruelty.” He admits they are “not the easiest to study at the neural level” — you can’t cram a pachyderm into an MRI machine. But he isn’t bothered by this dearth of data. In its absence, he holds up evolutionary continuity: the idea that humans share certain basic features, to some degree, with all living organisms. “We accept that there’s a parallel between a dolphin’s flipper and the human hand, or the elephant’s foot and a primate’s foot,” Jacobs says.
Likewise, if the brain structures that control stress in humans bear a deep resemblance to the same structures in zoo chimps — or elephants, or dolphins — then it stands to reason that the neurological response to captivity in those animals will be somewhat the same as our own. That, Jacobs says, is borne out by a half century of research into how impoverished environments alter the brains of species as varied as rats and primates.
Abnormal Behavior
Not all forms of captivity are equally impoverished, of course. Zookeepers often talk about “enrichment.” Besides meeting an animal’s basic material needs, they strive to make its enclosure engaging, to give it the space it needs to carry out its natural routines. Today’s American zoos generally represent a vast improvement over those of yesteryear. But animal advocates contend they will always fall short of at least the large animals’ needs. “No matter what zoos do,” Jacobs says, “they can’t provide them with an adequate, stimulating natural environment.”
If there is any doubt as to a captive animal’s wellbeing, even the uninformed zoogoer can detect what are perhaps the best clues: stereotypies. These repetitive, purposeless movements and sounds are the hallmark of a stressed animal. Elephants sway from side to side, orcas grind their teeth to pulp against concrete walls. Big cats and bears pace back and forth along the boundaries of their enclosures. One survey found that 80 percent of giraffes and okapis exhibit at least one stereotypic behavior. “Stress might be hard to measure,” Jacobs says, “but stereotypies are not hard to measure.” about:blankabout:blank
Proponents are quick to point out that zoos convert people into conservationists, and occasionally reintroduce endangered species to the wild (though critics question how effective they truly are on these fronts). Considering their potential to bolster the broader conservation movement, Romero suggests an ethical calculation might be in order. “Maybe sacrificing a few animals’ health is worth it,” he says.
Wherever these moral arguments lead, Jacobs argues that “the evidence is becoming overwhelming” — large mammals, or at least many of them, cannot prosper in confinement. The environmental writer Emma Marris concludes the same in Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World.“In many modern zoos, animals are well cared for, healthy and probably, for many species, content,” she writes, adding that zookeepers are not “mustache-twirling villains.” Nevertheless, by endlessly rocking and bobbing, by gnawing on bars and pulling their hair, “many animals clearly show us that they do not enjoy captivity.”
Animals all across the world are undergoing a strange transformation. In Appalachia,salamander body sizeshave decreased by 8 percent since 1960,menhaden fishcaught in the Atlantic are 15 percent lighter than they were in 1987, andbird specimensat Chicago’s Field Museum have lost up to 4 percent of their body mass since collection began in the late 1970s.
Agrowing body of evidencesuggests these changes are the product of global warming: As average temperatures rise, smaller bodies make it easier for warm-blooded animals to stay cool; for cold-blooded animals, warming temperatures speed up metabolism and stunt their growth.
These changes might appear relatively small, but they can…
Minnesota’s bear population has been on the rise over the past few years.The DNR has indicated that the amount of those applicating for bear hunting is up to 24,600 people. Glen Schmitt fromOutdoor Newssays we haven’t seen that number in more than 2 decades according to theDNR. He says “Minnesota is a really good bear hunting state.”
The baiting season for bears begins Friday August 13 with the hunting season set to begin on September 1st. Glen Schmitt says bear hunting is a lot of work which includes maintaining a bait station, and dealing hot and try conditions. Glen says the heaviest bear population in the state is in northern Minnesota. He says we only have black bears in the state. Glen says jelly, jelly donuts, and gummy bears or gummy…
David BressanContributorScienceI deal with the rocky road to our modern understanding of earthFollow
A new visualization tool will make data on future sea level rise from the Intergovernmental Panel on… [+]NASA/JPL-CALTECH
NASA’s Sea Level Change Team has created asea level projection toolbased on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that visualizes the impacts of future sea level rise on coastlines and communities.
More than 600 million people (around 10 percent of the world’s population) live in coastal areas that are less than 10 meters (32 feet) above sea level.
More than ever, people are turning away from animal products and toward plant-based foodby Jemima Webber8 hours ago
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For decades, vegan lifestyles have been relatively niche in the US. Veganism rarely appeared in the media and compared to today, many people were just not that interested in plant-based food.
But a rise in conscious consumerism has seen more people ditching animal products – citing health, environmental, and ethical motivations.
In the US, the number of vegans increased by 600 percent between 2014 and 2017, according to GlobalData.
And retailers are paying attention. Ninety-five percent of US grocery stores offer plant-based meat, Forbes reported in 2018.
Interest in vegan living is still going strong; the plant-based food market increased by 27 percent in 2020. In comparison, the total US retail food market increased by just 15 percent.
Moreover, the plant-based meat category grew twice as fast as animal-based meat, signaling a significant upheaval of the food industry.
Effects of reduced meat consumption
Many experts around the world agree that lowered consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs can benefit the planet – especially when it comes to tackling the climate crisis.
In fact, when researchers conducted the most comprehensive analysis of farming’s impact on the planet to date, they concluded that: “A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use.”
Additionally, many health professionals encourage plant-based eating to lower the risk of disease. Earlier this year, a team at the University of Oxford found that eating red meat and processed meat leads to a higher risk of ischaemic heart disease, pneumonia, and diabetes.
Poultry consumption, on the other hand, was linked to a higher risk of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease, gastritis, duodenitis, diverticular disease, gallbladder disease, and diabetes.
Workers in the meat industry
But the decline of meat hasn’t benefited everyone – namely, those working in the farming and meat processing industries.
According to IBISWorld, there are currently just under half a million (499,638) people employed in the US meat processing industry. Meat processors sort, clean, grind, and package meat for human consumption.
It’s the top ranked manufacturing industry by employment in the US.
The number of farmers raising animals for meat is less clear, especially considering the increase in factory farms. According to an analysis undertaken by Sentience Institute, around 99 percent of farmed animals in the US live on factory farms. Still, animal agriculture is undeniably the source of livelihood for millions of people worldwide. It’s a concept Vox explored in an article earlier this month. It begged the question: what does a meatless future look like for farmers?
Farmers and a meat-free future
Unsurprisingly, many people working in the animal-based food system have voiced their disapproval of the vegan movement. But it’s not the first time changes like this have happened.
Vox highlights similarities between the public’s wavering interest in meat and the decline of coal and oil.
“[Farmers’] position is not unlike what coal miners and oil workers faced a couple of decades ago before natural gas, wind energy, and solar power took over a big chunk of the market. In recent years, some have trained to become wind farm technicians or to install solar panels, while others have been unable to find work in the renewable energy sector,” the publication wrote.
“Just as with the shift to green energy, there are potential opportunities for sectors of the meat industry.”
For instance, some meatpackers could move on to packing plant-based products, Vox says. And in the farming world, a growing number of people have pivoted their businesses to move away from animal-based food.
Non-profit organisation Free From Harm has a dedicated section on its website for such people. It features meat, dairy, and egg farmers who have overhauled their businesses to focus on growing plant-based food.
For instance, Jennifer Barrett and her husband Rodney had raised cattle and chickens for 18 years. Health complications spurred Barrett to try out a plant-based diet. “I felt like a whole new person. My mind was so sharp and clear. In addition to that, I was sleeping like a baby. I had so much vitality and energy and JOY,” she wrote.
She also revealed that taking the chickens to slaughter had her ‘feeling so heavy with grief that they were all going to die… and for what?’
“I started to see the chickens differently. I’d never really looked at them as individuals before, but my heart started to break when I would see their terror and suffering. Suddenly I saw them as birds, not products!”
And so, the couple canceled their poultry production contract and stopped breeding and selling cattle. Now they’ve transitioned to mushroom farming.
A similar change of heart inspired former UK beef and dairy farmer Jay Wilde to take his herd to a sanctuary and begin growing vegetables instead.
Pig and sheep farmer Bob Comis started doubting his business model, too. “I am feeling very much that it might be wrong to eat meat, and that I might indeed be a very bad person for killing animals for a living,” he wrote on his blog.
More than a year later, he wrote: “Truly, I cannot think of one sound ethical argument in favor of slaughtering animals for their meat.” Comis became vegan and converted his farm to grow vegetables. He also created a documentary about the journey, called The Last Pig.
Transfarmation
There are a growing number of organizations assisting farmers in transforming their businesses to vegan models. Mercy For Animals launched a project called Transfarmation to do just that. It aids animal farmers convert their business models to animal-free ones, such as growing mushroom or hemp crops, or even producing solar and wind energy. The project aims to help farmers secure debt forgiveness as well as to launch crowdfunding campaigns to financially support the shift.
Tessa Archibald makes some excellent points in her Aug. 9 guest column, “Trapping has no place in a stressed-out ecosystem.”
This activity is primarily for recreational purposes, and causes prolonged, extensive suffering to animals. It’s an indefensible pursuit that wildlife agencies continue to encourage by permitting the trap check time to be as long as 96 hours, instead of the more humane 24 that some other states have adopted.
Attempts by wildlife advocates and concerned citizens to shorten the trap check time have failed in the past; in the meantime, both targeted and non-targeted animals have fallen victim, including pets. Once caught, they lie helplessly in pain and fear, without food or water and exposed to the elements and other predators. It’s a horrifying fate.
One need only view the archaic torture devices to…
On the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conquest, people from Mexico’s smallest state Tlaxcala say their ancestors were liberators
Dancers celebrate the anniversary of the founding of Tenochtitlán, the Mexica capital, on 26 July. Photograph: Luis Barron/Eyepix Group/Pacific Press/REX/Shutterstock
When people from the Mexican state of Tlaxcala travel to other parts of the country, they are sometimes insulted as traitors by their compatriots.
Tlaxcala is Mexico’s smallest state in size, but it played an outsized role in Mexico’s early history, not least when indigenous Tlaxcalans allied with Hernán Cortés’ tiny band of invaders to bring down the Aztec empire.
Now, as Mexico marks the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán on Friday, the role of the Tlaxcalans in the conquest is being reconsidered.
Many historians argue that without the participation of the Tlaxcalans and other indigenous soldiers, Tenochtitlán might never have fallen to the Spanish.
Tlaxcalans allied with Hernán Cortés to bring down the Aztec empire in 1520. Photograph: Unknown/Corbis
They are also revising the accusation of treachery, arguing that Tlaxcalans and other city states were in fact fighting a war of liberation against the oppressive Mexica (as the Aztecs were known).Advertisement
“It wasn’t 600 to 800 Spaniards who conquered [Tenochtitlán]. It was thousands and thousands of Tlaxcalans, Huejotzingas or other peoples, who were under the Mexica yoke and wanted to liberate themselves,” archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma told Radio Formula.
“Cortés had 30,000 to 40,000 Mesoamericans fighting with him,” said Aurelio López Corral, an archaeologist in Tlaxcala. “He couldn’t have done it on his own.”
The conquest is a singular event in Mexican history, seen both as a moment of national trauma and the founding act of the nation – and it remains deeply controversial.
Events to mark the anniversary have been met with tepid enthusiasm, as Mexico struggles with the coronavirus pandemic. A towering replica of the Templo Mayor – the Aztec civilization’s most sacred site – is being erected in Mexico City’s central Zócalo plaza.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called on the Spanish Crown and the Vatican to apologize for their roles in the “so-called conquest”. Spain declined; Pope Francis apologized while visiting Bolivia in 2015.
In Tlaxcala, however, his role in the fall of the Aztec empire tends to be underplayed, said Yassir Zárate Méndez, who produced a documentary which challenged the official history’s treatment of Tlaxcala.
“He is not seen exactly as a villain, unlike in other places, but as someone who played a complicated role in history,” he said. “Cortés goes somewhat unnoticed and remains below the level of local figures.”
Those include Xicohténcatl the Younger, a Tlaxcalan prince who vehemently opposed aligning with the Spanish, and remains fondly remembered in the state.
At the time of the conquest, Tlaxcalans shared a cosmovision with the Mexica and spoke the same language – Nahuátl.
Mexico City prepares for the anniversary of the fall of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlán. Photograph: Carlos Ramírez/EPA
But, unlike the imperial Aztecs, Tlaxcala had a more collective form of leadership, and when Cortés arrived, some in the leadership saw an opportunity to topple an old enemy, said Zárate.
The region provided soldiers for invading the island city of Tenochtitlán and allowed him to regroup after he was forced to flee an Aztec counteroffensive. Cortés reputedly built the boats used for eventually invading the Aztec capital in Tlaxcala.
“It was a question of political survival,” Zárate said. “To save yourself, you had to turn to whatever allies were necessary.”
After the fall of Tenochtitlán, the Tlaxcalans benefited handsomely from their arrangement – and Spaniards married into the local nobility. Tlaxcala received special status in the Spanish colonial period with a form of self-rule. Its residents received the right to settle other parts of the colony.
But when Mexico won independence in the 1820s, that power was lost, and an evolving national mythology focused on the fall of the Mexica, casting Tlaxcalans as traitors.
The National Institute of History and Anthropology (INAH) hosted forums in Tlaxcala in 2019 – 500 years after Cortés arrived in the state – exploring the local role in the conquest. It drew enormous interest, according to organizers.
“There’s a nagging thorn in most Tlaxcalans’ minds [about the conquest] and a sort of anger because the adjective ‘traitor’ has been so strong,” Juan de la Rosa, INAH delegate in Tlaxcala, said in a 2019 interview. “But they have the need to have arguments that explains why they’re not traitors.”
(Credit: DN Cherry/Shutterstock)
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