Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
All the entries posted in November.
Categories
Commenting is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. M-F
More recent entries
- Get ready for Mexico's Next Top Model
- Narcos: we didn't blow up celebration
- Independence Day 'terrorist' attack rocks Mexico
- Spectacular Sian Ka'an bioreserve continues to burn
- Horror stories from the Mexican burueacracy
- More entries...
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |
| More archives... | ||||||
Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
Green Dreams for hybrids in Mexico
President Felipe Calderon is trying to boost miserable sales of hybrid cars in Mexico, proposing this afternoon that all new hybrids be exempt from a stiff annual sales tax. Mexico City, one of the world’s most polluted cities, already has waived the tax on hybrids. Last year only 485 hybrids were sold in Mexico, compared to 143,000 in the first five months of this year in the United States.
Hybrid mania has yet to catch on in Mexico, despite the high cost of gas (nearly as much as consumers pay in Texas even though Mexico produces its own oil). Mexicans much prefer bulkier SUVs: in Mexico City last year 43,915 SUVs were sold, nearly 10,000 times as many as the 48 hybrids that were bought.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment
When police become the kidnappers
Chalk this one up under unsettling Mexico City tales: Last night, members of the city’s judicial police, a detective unit under the city’s attorney general’s office, kidnapped three clubgoers and demanded a ransom from their parents. The night ended in a wild shootout without another group of Mexico City police, who tried to arrest the renegade officers.
According to Mexican media accounts, the saga began outside of the La Bipolar club in Coyoacan just down the street from the Cox office and a trendy spot owned by Mexican movie star Diego Luna (great cucumber martinis). The judicial police reportedly arrested the men, but instead of taking them to the station called their parents and demanded about $1,000 to keep their sons’ out of jail on trumped up marijuana charges.
One of the fathers alerted the SSP, the run-of-the-mill Mexico City police force, which descended on the drop-off point. Judicial police were waiting in a van with no plates and tried to escape when they realized the city police were on to them, sparking the shootout. The judicial police fled to their nearby headquarters, where their fellow cops poured outside, creating a human wall to keep the city police from arresting the alleged kidnappers. In the ensuing melee, one member of the judicial police was shot and killed and two others were wounded. One of the kidnapped clubgoers was also shot three times and is in the hospital. The other two were unharmed.
In the aftermath, we learn that 42 members of the judicial police have been arrested on charges ranging from extortion to robbery to homicide in the last nine months. The Mexico City mayor has pledged a new round of “confidence testing,” aimed at weeding out corrupt officers.
If there’s a silver lining in this tale, it’s that the SSP vigorously pursued the judiciales and in essence, did their jobs correctly. But the whole incident underscored what for many Mexico City residents is a daily mantra: don’t trust the police.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Speed bumps: the scourge of Mexico
If you think Austin has too many speed bumps, you would be horrified by the proliferation of the traffic-calming devices south of the border.
Speed bumps (called “topes” here) are everywhere: they appear unannounced on major highways, turn residential neighborhoods into obstacle courses and cause major traffic backups on city streets. And there is no “speed cushion” foolishness in Mexico: we’re talking good old concrete, high enough to scrape the chassis when you pass over.
Simply put, speed bump mania is out of control in Mexico.
Many speed bumps aren’t the result of the public works department, but are installed by neighbors hoping to slow traffic on their own particular stretch of road. 
How ridiculous has the speed bump movement gotten in Mexico? Check out this speed bump some uptight neighbors put on a NARROW, COBBLESTONE ALLEY near our house in the Coyoacan neighborhood.
But speed bumps are even more of a menace once you leave the city. On all but the biggest highways, “topes” can be found at the entrance to every town, no matter how small.
We don’t drive in Mexico City, but when we hit the hinterlands for an assignment we often rent a car.
Covering Hurricane Dean in the Yucatan a few months ago, speed bumps nearly were our undoing.
After driving to Chetumal, near where Dean made landfall, we sped back up the highway hoping to reach Tulum before night fell. In the quickly disappearing light of dusk, we would hit poorly marked speed bumps (some are painted bright yellow, but others are dark and deliver a nasty surprise if you don’t know they’re coming up). Flying over a tope at 50 m.p.h. is not as fun as it sounds. Luckily we stayed upright, but the mad braking and lurching over the speed bumps further frayed our already frazzled nerves.
In fairness, some type of speed control is definitely needed in Mexico, where drivers regularly go as fast as the local conditions will allow. But as communities from Texas to California have cried out in recent years, there has to be a better way!
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Slain narco corrido singer finds success in death
It’s only been a year since his death, but murdered corrido crooner Valentin Elizalde is already on a path to Elvis-like post-death reverance in Mexico. Elizalde was a moderately successful singer when he was gunned down after a show in the border town of Reynosa last November 25. The Sonoran-born singer had been linked to the powerful Sinaloa drug cartel and sang some inflammatory narco-corridos - songs that detail the exploits of drug smugglers - in Reynosa. But Reynosa, the theory goes, is territory of the Gulf Cartel, Sinaloa’s main rival, and it’s widely believed that disgruntled Gulf cartel hitmen were responsible for the post-concert bloodbath.
Since his death, Elizalde has become a pop culture phenomenon. His songs are heard everywhere in the country and at all hours. Here in Mexico City, Elizalde can seem omnipresent, blasting from the stalls at the city’s markets, on the bus, in the taxi. He had recorded an album shortly before his death which has been released posthumously, a la 2Pac, the fallen American rapper. The album, “Lobo Domesticado” sold more than 100,000 units, a spectacular success in bootlegging-plagued Mexico.
The National Enquirer-like Fama weekly magazine recently published a 47-page special issue dedicated to Elizalde, comparing his success to that of slain Tejano star Selena. The magazine details how some of his fans have taken to praying to his image, and in Sinaloa his music is considered to have healing powers and is credited with helping a boy with Down Syndrome to talk. Meanwhile, a legion of imitators have seized Elizalde’s name, hoping to sell some records of their own.
Elizalde was killed during a wave of violence directed at Mexican singers of narco-corridos, a trend that thankfully has lost steam recently.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
Back on the border
Last week we headed up to the border for a story in the Chihuahuan desert and for some turkey and stuffing with Nancy’s parents. We flew to Monterrey and took a bus up to Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass. After being in Mexico City for so long, it was a little jarring how different the borderlands are from the megalopolis: the landscape, the people, the Wranglers all share much more culturally with Texas than Mexico City. Just as border people in Texas complain the politicians in Washington, D.C. don’t understand the border, so too do their Mexican counterparts complain about the politicos in the Mexican capital.
It was also a little sad to see what is happening in our beloved Coahuila, where Nancy and I were married two years ago. The Coahuilan border is often called the “frontera blanca” (the clean border), a reference to the relative safety and absence of violence there, especially compared to Nuevo Laredo to the east and Ciudad Juarez to the west. But violence has been creeping into Coahuila in the last year, most likely the result of increasing federal pressure on other parts of the border. Saltillo, the state capital, has seen several high ranking police chiefs gunned down. It goes to show that no stretch of border is entirely immune from the narco-wars.
Meanwhile, the border area continues to boom, driven mostly by Mexican shoppers looking for deals on the U.S. side and a weak dollar. Mexican bus lines advertise all-day shopping trips to Eagle Pass malls and parking lots continue to be filled with Mexican license plates. And leaders on both sides of the Texas/Coahuila border continue to lead the effort against a border wall. Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster has become a spokesman of sorts, sparring with Bill O’Reilly and appearing on NPR.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Inmates turned into sex workers: Another day in a Mexican prison
Corruption in Mexico’s prisons has always been the stuff of legend, but the situation at Mexico City’s women’s prison has reached an even smarmier level.
According to the Reforma daily, the head of the Santa Martha prison is pimping out female prisoners, bringing them to nearby men’s prisons where they trade sex for money from male prisoners and guards. Of course, top prison officials got a generous cut from the prostitution operation.
According to guards, the female prisoners get between $5 and $20 for having sex in the dank tunnels connected to the men’s prisons. The scheme apparently worked like this: prison officials would sign out female prisoners, claiming they had a date with a judge.
A couple years ago, Mexico was outraged when luxurious living conditions (think surround sound, leather couchesfresh lobster) for imprisoned drug lords came to light. It is still commonly accepted that money can buy an inmate almost anything in a Mexican prison.
Borderline crazy: Killings up along the frontier in Mexico
Violence along the border is spiking again, with police chiefs and politicians among the targets.
The bloodshed is especially troubling in the border state of Coahuila, which until this year had been an oasis of calm along a roiling frontera.
A month ago, Austin Police suspended visits to their counterparts in the Coahuila capital, Saltillo, after two high ranking local cops were kidnapped and executed.
Over the weekend, the chief of the federal police in Coahuila, Luis Hernandez Marquez, was sprayed with cop-killer bullets as he drove his car through Saltillo. The top cop is in grave condition at a local hospital.
Border violence also ratcheted up ahead of Sunday’s state elections in Tamaulipas, which borders Brownsville and Laredo.
The elections, which were virtually swept by the PRI, featured conservative PAN candidates and PRIistas alike complaining of threats and attacks.
A PAN city council candidate was kidnapped just hours before the election, sparking a protest at the international bridge in that border town.
Election day on Sunday saw numerous rumors of gun battles and constant overhead flights of military helicopters meant to keep the calm, according Mexican media reports. Despite the rumors, there were no reports of major election-day violence.
Day of the Dead … and a struggle to survive in Tabasco
Most of Mexico is celebrating today, taking part in festive Day of the Dead observances from the Zocalo in Mexico City to cemeteries in Oaxaca.
But in the state of Tabasco, hundreds of thousands of people have just one thing on their mind: survival.
Much of the low-lying, tropical state, at the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula, finds itself under some level of water from flooded rivers. The state got a quick respite from torrential rain yesterday, but more rains are on the horizon.
Mexico is rallying around the people of Tabasco, much as the U.S. did after Katrina devastated New Orleans. Canned food drives are popping up all over Mexico City and President Felipe Calderon has called on Mexicans to give as much as they can to their fellow Tabasquenos.
As bad as the situation is in Tabasco, it could get worse in coming days. Not only is more rain forecast, but water and food shortages, looting and the possibility of diseases like cholera have been reported. The government has been desperately trying to rescue people from rooftops and shelters are saturated. The governor announced that the floods have affected a million people and some 300,000 are in need of rescue.
Comparisons with Katrina are hard to avoid. The El Universal daily writes this morning in an editorial that New Orleans and Tabasco both suffered from a lack of planning despite warnings that local levies and dams weren’t sufficient to hold back massive rainfall. Voices are also beginning to question how the floods caught the state so off-guard and why mass evacuations weren’t ordered earlier.
Unlike Katrina however, the death toll in Tabasco — so far at least — has been amazingly low. One resident reportedly died of a heart attack during a rescue, but other than that reports of drowning have yet to emerge. But hundreds of residents have been reported missing.