San Miguel FAQ

"I am not normally in ketosis. But it also isn’t the SAD. It is sugar and grain free. Processed food free."

So yours is a low-carb diet but not actually ketogenic? As the video says:

After all, the four largest calorie contributors in the American diet are refined grains, added fats, meat, and added sugars. Low-carb diets cut down on 1 and 4, and low-fat diets tend to cut down on 2 and 3. So they both tell people to cut down on doughnuts. Any diet that does that already has a leg up. ...

Keto compliance may be more in theory than practice, though. Even in studies where ketogenic diets are being used to control seizures, after a few months dietary compliance may drop to under 50 percent. This can be tragic for those with intractable epilepsy, but for everyone else, the difficulty in sticking to ketogenic diets long-term may actually be a lifesaver. I’ll talk about keto diet safety next. — Dr. Greger

Brief Update Oct 11, 2019
October 2 ... The homicide is the first recorded in October, and the 96th in SMA during 2019.
More Security in San Miguel de Allende Oct 2.
So, 95 murders in SMA through September, más o menos.

95 x 12/9 = 127 annualized homicide rate.
(The end of September is 9/12 of the way through the year.)

127 / 1.7 = 75.
(We have a population of about 170,000 people.)

Current annualized murders per 100,000 in SMA = 75.

The US Dept of State U.S. Citizen Deaths Overseas ...
This is updated at six month intervals so no change since our last update.
... through the first half of this year includes 0 U.S. Citizen deaths due to non-natural causes in SMA in 2019.
U.S. Citizen Deaths Overseas.

Mexico Crime Report is updated through August
The murder has gone back up in August after dropping since February ...

Interactive infographics is available at this website.
Mexico Crime Report

Semáforo Delictivo now has August data

Interactive infographics is available at this website.
Semáforo Delictivo

The official notice is now online:
IMPORTANT NOTICE Monday, October 7 to November 25.

CLOSURE OF STREETS:
Street: Zacateros, section: Hernández Macías to Orizaba.

Rehabilitation work in the drinking water network and tap replacement.

PLEASE PROGRAM YOUR TRANSIT TIMES AND CONSIDER ALTERNATE ROADS.

Thanks for this info!

Is this the same as organ donation? Or, if not, do you know if someone is also an organ donor, is this process consistent with that or is there a conflict?

Dr. Greger's grandmother and her experience with Pritikin and a whole food plant based diet described in the video was a motivating factor for Dr. Greger going into medicine and starting NutritionFacts. (I do volunteer work for NutritionFacts.org).

NUTRITIONFACTS.ORG is a strictly non-commercial, science-based public service provided by Dr. Michael Greger, providing free updates on the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos.

We believe that a significant part of the problem is that individuals who want to make the correct dietary choices for themselves and their families are faced with a deluge of confusing and conflicting nutritional advice. The goal of this website is to present you and your doctor with the results of the latest in peer-reviewed nutrition and health research, presented in a way that is easy to understand. — NutritionFacts

I do not know the Pritikin diet in detail, nor what Horne is advocating in detail but they seem pretty similar. From a quick scan of a Ross Horne book it appears he suggests modifying the Pritikin approach by eating raw food and more fruit and no grains. So, basically a whole food, plant based raw diet. Some excerpts from his book:

Eleven years ago I was Nathan Pritikin's best disciple and staunchest supporter.

I had observed the Pritikin diet achieve what appeared to be absolute miracles in restoring people who were literally dying back to good health, my own wife being one of them.

Today I still firmly believe in the principles to which Nathan Pritikin devoted the last twenty seven years of his life but I have discovered that the Pritikin diet is far from the best way of implementing those principles.
...
In regard to my criticism of the Pritikin diet in the chapters which follow, I wish to make it very clear, here at the beginning, that despite our differences in opinion, my gratitude and respect for Nathan Pritikin, the man, remain undiminished. In my eyes, Pritikin still stands as one of the great Americans of the 20th Century.
...
Ross believes that the cooking of food is an unnatural process, damaging to the nutritional value of the food, and in the long run damaging to the people who eat the food, as he has explained so ably in his books and substantiated in his own case studies. Going further, his research and keen observations have led him to believe that grains may be one of the culprits in setting the stage for cancer.
...
There is no doubt that the cooking of food is an unnatural process invented by man comparatively recently in his evolutionary development. Although cooking may render certain foods, such as cereals, more readily assimilable to human digestion, and render some foods more palatable, generally it is a destructive process which seriously depletes the nutritive value of food. — Improving On Pritikin: You Can Do Better

But, I'm pretty sure that either approach is far better for most people than the Standard American Diet (SAD). :smile:

The road work / closures from before the suspension can be seen in:
https://www.smafaq.com/discussion/569/upcoming-activities-and-events-sept-9-2019
Scroll down to the section "Scheduled Road Work and Closures".

This is the first I've seen of this.

I checked my usual sources for road closures (the last 4 under Government on the Links page) and don't see anything about it yet:

• SAPASMA (Facebook)
• @GobSMA SMA Government Twitter
• @ChaakSapasma SAPASMA Twitter
• @difsanmiguel DIF San Miguel de Allende Twitter

I also don't see anything recent in my RSS feed for anything recent about this. Including nothing from:
https://sanmigueldeallende.gob.mx
(Which is sometimes a source of road work info.)

I can see "SAPASMA" in the pic. You might try messaging them via their Facebook page (one of the links above). ... Oh, looking closer, it's also Zacateros? Nothing in my RSS feed about that either.

If I see anything I'll post it here and add it to the newest Upcoming Activities and Events post.

Oh wait... maybe related to ...
https://noticiasconvalorsma.com/2019/09/08/sapasma-suspende-obras-en-calle-de-zacateros-por-eventos-patrios/

And the work which was suspended is resuming?

Jessica and Jane (and others reading this), Feel free to promote your classes on this site. Part of our mission is to provide a place where people can promote their business and interests. That helps the poster, the readers, and adds more useful content to SMAFAQ.

As we say in the Forum rules: 4. Yes, you may post about and promote your charity, business, service, or creations.

For help creating new discussions, including adding images and video, see:
https://www.smafaq.com/discussion/64/creating-discussions-and-comments

Saltwater bubbling up from Biscayne Bay onto Miami’s streets. Not a drop of rain for the past several days.

Thanks for the great interviews and articles Jessica!

In Mexico, 85 fintechs are seeking permission to operate
Mexican banking regulator CNBV said on Thursday it received applications from 85 companies to formally operate in the country under its new fintech law as the government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pushes for more financial inclusion.

The government has been looking to both banks and fintechs as it aims to reduce cash in circulation to cut down on money laundering and corruption, and to draw more people into the formal economy. ...

In Mexico an estimated 44% of the adult population own no financial products. Many are put off by steep banking fees and past scandals, or they are too poor to save. Others shun the formal banking system to stay off the radar of tax collectors.
In Mexico, 85 fintechs are seeking permission to operate.

85 firms apply to operate under Mexico’s new fintech law
On Thursday, the commission said that fintech companies that have still not applied would no longer be able to do business in Mexico and that sanctions would be imposed against those that do.

An online payment service affected by the new law is PayPal, which chose not to seek authorization as an electronic payment fund, but to operate instead as a payment aggregator service. To comply with the law, which required financial services to register by Wednesday, PayPal transferred any balances in users’ accounts to their bank accounts.
85 firms apply to operate under Mexico’s new fintech law.

ComiDomi delivery has shut down.

But, I see that AfroAllende now allows you to order on their Facebook page and on their website.

At the beginning of September, I got a note that said: "La Frontera has the best veggie burger! ... And I’m not vegetarian!" and I promised to give them a try.

We ate there about two weeks ago and have since tried their veggie burger delivered. The patty is made from quinoa, black bean, onion, red pepper and spinach.

I added the La Frontera Veggie Burger to the Best Veggie Burger in SMA post above.

Some random thoughts (and trying to keep this short, so very rough) ...

As someone once said, "It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future."

Whether an event or attraction is secular or religious, organic or artificial, new or ancient if it can be exploited to make money it will be. Or, perhaps more accurately, it already has been and is being currently exploited to make money. If an event or attraction needs to be created for that purpose in the future it will be if there is enough money in it.

Just as the Americas did not exist before Christopher Columbus discovered them, San Miguel de Allende did not exist before Stirling Dickinson discovered it. And it has been discovered again by readers of Conde Nast. and, Travel and Leisure, the NYT, and ...

SMA has passed some threshold and has a critical mass of attention that will continue to fuel its growth as a tourist destination until and unless something major changes. It matters little in the big picture, I think, whether the tourists are coming from Mexico City, NOB, Europe, Asia or elsewhere.

Except there is a difference between tourists driving here or flying in to a nearby airport in terms of local vehicle traffic. And, the local government is currently working to increase the amount of local traffic (in some areas at least) with current and planned road, glorieta and traffic signal projects. (If you reduce traffic congestion and improve traffic flow the expected result is an increased amount of traffic.)

On the other hand, cartel murders in SMA may impact the tourism business and seems to already have had an effect, especially for those outside of Mexico. Although tourists and retirees are not generally the target of this cartel action it is bad for the tourism image. As I see it, there is little the local government can do about cartel-on-cartel violence. Things can be done, just not at the level of local government.

Against that is the backdrop of environmental and climate change. I expect climate change to get much worse before it gets better. And we have declining water tables with more and more arsenic and fluoride contamination.

But I expect (hope) that the SMA climate remains great for the rest of my lifetime. Maybe we will have to truck in water (from where?) and, use rainwater collection where ever possible.

Relations with the US are a factor and hard to predict. If the US does not welcome Mexican tourists then that benefits SMA tourism business from Mexico. If relations sour, Mexico could retaliate and make it less desirable for US immigrants to live here.

The drug business and cartel violence is another big factor and hard to predict.

If those two factors stay about the same, then my predictions for the most likely scenario is more of the same:
SMA will continue to be a retirement destination for immigrants from NOB with enough money.
SMA will continue to be a tourist destination for those from around the world with enough money.
SMA will continue to be developed in a manner to attract tourists and retirees.

The biggest winners in this will be the moneyed interests driving these investments.
The biggest losers will be the regular local Mexicans in SMA that are getting squeezed economically.

From Sonia Diaz via Facebook:

If one needs assistance please ask. .

In San Miguel de Allende AirBnB and similar digital rental properties are assessed an annual fee of 10,000 pesos per unit. In addition, those with AirBnB and similar properties throughout Guanajuato state pay a 2% tax.

If the property is within the Historic Centre, the business owner will need to go to Direccion del Patrimonio (Heritage Office). If the property in the urban area outside of Centro, they will need to go to Desarrollo Urbano (Urban Development). Proteccion Civil (Civil Protection) will conduct an evaluation, and if they approve it, the owner will be given a land-use permit once the 10,000 pesos is paid. The city will follow up with those who do not follow the law.

1. The process takes about 2 months.

2. A tourist may not operate an AirBnB or similar digital rental business.

3. One must be a Temporary Resident with Permiso Para Trabajar Visa (permission to earn income) or if Permanent Resident proof the rental operator has informed Inmigracion of their change of status of earning income.

4. Person must be registered with SAT for Federal taxes with an RFC and registered for taxes at the Guanajuato state level with a RGC number.

5. The fee is 10,000 pesos per year per unit.

6. The 2% Guanajuato state tax is paid when one pays their state tax using their RGC. — Sonia Diaz

More here.

Sonia Diaz
Sonia Diaz Consulting

Today we made our second order online. This time, when I went to pay I tried a different PayPal account. It would not go through on the La Comer side. This was a US based PayPal account, so, I thought I'd try the one I used before which is Mexico based.

But the website had hung. So I closed that tab, then came back in and went to my cart. The items were all still there and I tried checking out again with the Mexico PayPal. That also did not work and the site hung again. I closed the tab and then came back in and tried checking out again. This time I tried a (US) credit card online. That did not work.

I closed the tab and tried again and this time said I would pay upon delivery. That worked. I guess their online payment system was out of order.

Anyway, the groceries showed up in the specified time window and I was able to use the (US) credit card to pay the driver. Success! I did give him a cash tip.

Humberto is the man.

To contact Humberto at Mini Express, see:
https://www.smafaq.com/discussion/13/how-do-you-get-your-u-s-mail-and-packages

I have only used them for new items with invoices. I'm not sure how they handle used items through customs.

More information from Atención:
Feline Sanctuary’s Monthly Gourmet Fundraiser Theme Is South Africa’s Big Cats
On the heels of last month’s fundraising dinner and lecture on Transylvania and Romania, the cat sanctuary Santuario Felino Rey Ashoka, A.C will host a thematic evening of fundraising, this time devoted to the topic of South Africa’s big cats. There are 10 species of African cats. Most know about the lion, ...
Feline Sanctuary’s Monthly Gourmet Fundraiser Theme Is South Africa’s Big Cats[.

(GW: I'm combining two discussions to keep any replies in one place.) Larry also adds:
"Planning a trip to S.M.A how safe is it to drive down from nogales to S.M.A.? "

From Ian Clement on his SMABUZZ website (you may need to be a member to see his post there):

I am sure that some of you know that there is a new municipal law which obligates all renters (private homes and hotels, alike) to establish an 'Uso de Suelo' and pay a yearly fee, in order to continue with this activity. We are currently processing applications for this set-up. This is a maneuver that we can handle for you whether you are in Mexico, or not. With the necessary paperwork and a POA, we can get everyone correctly situated to continue renting, w/o the looming possibility of an Hacienda audit. Please reach out to me at the email address listed below to get started. — Ian Clement

Ian Clement
clementattorneyatgmaildotcom