Word: tehuantepec
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...areas of North America are more isolated or serene than Mexico's Oaxaca state, astride the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Foreign visitors are few, and they are usually young Americans interested in eating local "magic" mushrooms. Yet for the past few weeks, Oaxaca (pronounced wa-hac-a) has been bustling with unnatural activity. Toting tons of expensive paraphernalia, nearly 800 scientists from 14 countries have descended on the mountainous state. Frightened by the "demon" that the scientists have come to see, superstitious Indian villagers have been busily offering prayers, lighting candles and staging other rituals. Their supplications are designed...
Counting the Cost. One possible route crosses the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. Last January Democratic Majority Leader Mike Mansfield proposed that the U.S. and Mexico join with other maritime nations in building the canal. But Mexico's initial reaction was cool. At that, a Tehuantepec canal would be the longest and most expensive to dig, costing $2.3 billion and requiring 815 nuclear explosives. The Nicaragua-Costa Rica route would cost less ($1.9 billion), but raises all sorts of political problems by crossing two countries. Another surveyed route, at the Atrato and Truando rivers of north west Colombia...
Across Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec swept a boom fever as intoxicating as tequila. In the tiny coastal towns of Minatitlán and Coatzacoalcos. Mexicans with bulging bankrolls were spending them on refrigerators, Mixmasters, and dozens of other items they could only dream about a few years ago. Slapdash buildings were going up everywhere; Minatitlán's newest hotel opened for business before it was even finished, a second bank went up, honky-tonk bars and gambling joints were busy 24 hours a day. Cause of it all: sulphur, an element far more valuable to industry...
...Brady brothers, who have worked on and off as contract drillers for oil companies, got their first hint of Mexican sulphur 15 years ago when Ashton picked up a 1904 Shell Oil Co. exploration report. It told of salt domes on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a geological formation that often indicates sulphur. It took six years before they could prove their hunch. Starting to drill near San Cristóbal in 1942, they were slowed down by the war, by an unfriendly and suspicious local population, even by the malaria-filled jungle itself, where torrential rains turn everything into...
MEXICAN SULPHUR will soon be flowing to world markets in quantity. Pan American Sulphur Co., biggest of three U.S. firms developing a huge sulphur discovery on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, has just completed a $7,000,000 plant, which will swing into full production next month at a capacity of 800,000 tons yearly. Pan American's proven sulphur reserve: 30 million tons...