November 26, 2007
Tourism, Monarch Butterfly Sanctuaries and
Mexican Nature Reserves
(Excerpts from a speech by President Felipe
Calderón)
Angangueo,
Michoacán – I am very pleased, that as the Angangueo coat of arms shows, this nature reserve annually receives
millions of butterflies that come to spend the winter in our ancient sacred firs after a journey of over four thousand kilometers
from Canada to Mexico.
For the Purépecha, the butterflies' stay meant the
essence of the dead, because the butterflies used to arrive around the time of the Day of the Dead; and for the Otomí and
Mazahua, they represented the spirit of the harvest, because the harvest ended when the Monarch Butterfly arrived. These butterflies,
which attract thousands of tourists, are regarded as one of Mexico's natural wonders, and this season we hope to receive 230,000
tourists, which is actually quite few considering how much this means.
Today we have over 670,000 hectares of nature reserves,
including the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve in Guanajuato; Bahía de los Angeles, in Baja California; the Parque de la Zona
Marina del Archipiélago Espíritu Santo, in Baja California Sur, and others, and we are advancing towards our goal of over
three million hectares in nature reserves by the end of my government.
Two more things. I would like to tell those living
in this area that we are already working with the United Nations to have the Monarch Butterfly area recognized as a World
Heritage Site, which we hope to achieve soon. And second, we will be working very closely with the people of Agangeo, not
only to help them solve their development problems, but also so that Angangueo can be reinforced as one of the magical towns
of Mexico and attract more tourism, so we are working on that too.
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(Edited translation from Presidency of the Republic,
November 25, 2007, Mexico City)
