Uncovering Mexico
Jeremy Schwartz is the Mexico correspondent for Cox Newspapers. He is based in Mexico City.What's on this page?
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Home > Uncovering Mexico > Archives > 2007 > September
September 2007
Graffiti dreams, part III
The search for Mexico’s finest graffiti hit the wild and wooly streets of Nezahualcoyotl, or Neza, or Neza York, depending on who you talk to. This sprawling slum on the outskirts of Mexico City has quite a reputation in the republic. It’s one of those places whose very name makes some people nervous, kind of like the South Bronx or Compton.
This past weekend Neza played host to the Just Writing My Name graffiti festival, which brings together some of the world’s best graffiti artists on a single wall. Past festivals have been held in Moscow, New York and Sao Paolo. This weekend’s edition brought artists from throughout Mexico: Oaxaca, Veracruz, Morelos, Sonora and of course, Mexico City, were well represented, as well as some U.S. border states.
The results were mind-blowing. From a bulletproof Baby Jesus to a snail-riding B-Girl, the pieces stretched the boundaries of creativity. Anyone interested in larger versions for a screensaver or wallpaper can email me at jschwartz@statesman.com.
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Congress to investigate Fox
It’s official: The Mexican Congress decided today to investigate former President Vicente Fox and his lavish ranch house.
Fox set off a firestorm this month when he allowed the celebrity magazine Quien into his opulent home in Guanajuato. Photos of the home (which can be found here) set off howls of protest from his political opponents, who charged the ex-president with enriching himself through the presidency, much as presidents have done throughout Mexico’s history.
Fox however, overturned 71 years of one-party rule and was supposed to have ushered in a government of “change.” Fox has vehemently denied using the presidency to fatten his wallet, and pledged transparency when it comes to his personal wealth. Since his term ended last December, Fox began receiving a $270,000 annual pension.
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Fox shows off his crib, and raises questions about wealth
Following a magazine spread that has all of Mexico talking, former president Vicente Fox and wife Marta Sahagun have got themselves embroiled in festering scandal over their wealth.
Opposition lawmakers claim the couple inappropriately enriched themselves during Fox’s six-year term and are demanding an investigation. Meanwhile, Fox is getting heat for reportedly carting off mountains of official documents for his planned presidential library when he left office.
The trouble started earlier this month when the couple posed for Quien, a glossy celebrity magazine. The couple opened up their sumptuous Guanajuato ranch home, complete with outdoor pool, artificial lake and industrial kitchen.
Soon after, Fox’s former campaign aide, Lino Korrodi, emerged, publicly accusing Fox of having accumulated a “shameless and cynical wealth.”
A day later the sharks began circling, with PRI Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones telling reporters: “The ex-president owes the people of Mexico an explanation about these properties, renovated with great quantites of money.”
Fox fired back with a press release denying any wrongdoing and insisting he has always made his finances public and transparent. During the infamous Quien interview, Fox said “Those who say that this property is the product of stolen money or from money left to me through the presidency will have to eat their words, because it’s not true.”
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After further review in Mexico: Get off the Patriots’ back
While the national media in the States has been quick to slap the “cheaters” label on the New England Patriots, observers south of the border are more forgiving when it comes to the three-time Super Bowl champs.
Fernando Von Rossum, perhaps Mexico’s foremost football analyst, blasts American commentators in today’s Reforma newspaper for their indignant diatribes against the Patriots and coach Bill Belichick.
“I’m inclined to think that we are faced with that oh so human condition called envy, in the face of a team and a coach that, like it or not, is currently on a higher plane than its peers and whose only equal at the moment are the champion Indianapolis Colts,” Von Rossum wrote in his column.
Von Rossum, who has covered the NFL for Mexican television for nearly 40 years, goes on to say that the Patriots were correctly penalized for breaking NFL rules, but that the U.S. media suffers from hypocrisy when it bemoans Bellichick’s theft of the New York Jets’ defensive signals.
“Those famous signals are constantly being modified and many players change teams every year, bringing that information with them,” he wrote.
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The hottest thing in hair-loss treatments!
As you may be able to tell from the photo that accompanies this blog, my hair is suffering from shall we say, a maturation process. Put less delicately, it is thinning and, if I’m going to be a man about it, is receding (slowly, thank god) at the temples.
On a recent visit to Mexico City, my mother-in-law told me about shampoo made from fiery chiles that are supposed to fortify your hair. The basic idea I think, is that the pugnacious chiles whip your wimpy follicles into shape. The shampoo might not grow new hair, but it could give existing hairs the strength not to tumble out like dandelion seeds.
Strangely enough, the chile shampoo is sold in every subway station in the city at herbal remedy shops. For about $4 I picked up a bottle and set about repairing my scalp. The bottle I bought also contains rosemary and garlic for added power. The shampoo is a deep red and smells of salsa (remember to put it in your hair, not your mouth). You’re supposed to leave it in for the duration of the shower, rinsing just before you get out.
There’s a slight tingle (I’ve heard others actually burn) and thankfully my wife tells me my hair doesn’t smell like a pizza afterwards. It’s a little early to tell if it’s working yet (my heart says it is), but I promise to check in in a few months with some results. Of course if anyone out there has used the chile shampoo, please drop a comment to let us know how it worked.
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Best buddies? Not so much.
Back when they were first elected president of their respective countries in 2000, George W. Bush and Vicente Fox of Mexico looked to be the best of friends, holding talks on their ranches like a couple of good ol’ boys.
The truth, it seems, was a little different.
In his autobiography out next month, Fox reportedly talks some smack about his fellow head of state, calling Bush “the cockiest guy I ever met in my life” and writing that his Spanish skills (which he used to great effect during his campaign) were “grade-school level.”
He also slams Bush’s Iraq policies and says he doubted W had what it took to become president. “I can’t honestly say that I had ever seen George W. Bush getting to the White House,” Fox writes, according to the Washington Whispers blog by U.S. News and World Report.
But perhaps it’s not so strange for Fox to take some shots at Bush. He was bitterly disappointed that Bush all but ignored Mexico and immigration reform after 9/11 and he opposed the war in Iraq. By the time Fox left office last year, relations between the two had gotten a little chilly.
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Mexicans pay price at the pump
Ordinary Mexicans must wonder sometimes where the benefit is in having one of the world’s major supplies of oil. They certainly don’t see it in the gas prices. Unlike other oil-producing countries, Mexico doesn’t give its citizens cheap gasoline. Whereas Venezuelans pay about 20 cents per gallon (and that pre-dates the socialistic policies of Hugo Chavez), Mexicans pay about $3 a gallon for gasoline from PEMEX, the nationalized gasoline company. And natural gas is equally pricey. My wife and I spend nearly $100 a month on gas for our water heaters and oven.
It’s about to get worse for Mexican drivers. The Mexican Senate last week approved a 5.5 percent increase in gasoline prices as part of a wide-ranging fiscal reform meant to significantly increase the amount of tax revenue Mexico collects. Losing leftist presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has seized on the issue to once again attack President Felipe Calderon, who he accuses of using gasoline to tax those who can least afford it. Calderon is pushing for an overhaul of PEMEX that will allow the struggling entity to spend more money on deep water exploration, considered vital in the face of dwindling reserves.
Calderon would also like to wean the Mexican economy from PEMEX. While ordinary Mexicans may not see the benefits of having all that oil when they fill their tanks, PEMEX accounts for about 40 percent of Mexico’s budget and subsidizes public spending.
The new fiscal reform will usher in a host of new taxes aimed at making Mexico less PEMEX-dependant. Most are aimed at businesses and include stiffer penalties for evasion. Mexico has what is likely the lowest tax collection rate in the hemisphere (comparable to Haiti), a situation that the nation ignored for years because of cushion provided by PEMEX.
But many Mexicans are wondering why the fiscal reform will make driving more expensive than it already is.
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Who knew? Guatemala City holds the secret to traffic jams.
As we sped through the pre-dawn streets of Guatemala City on our way to the airport, my wife and I couldn’t help noticing the squadron of 18-wheelers crowding the darkened roads.
Our taxi driver explained that a few weeks ago, the Guatemala City mayor, desperate to ease the city’s traffic, had taken the drastic step of banning tractor trailers and other large trucks from the city’s streets during morning and afternoon rush hours. The drivers had understandably rebelled at the idea of having to work mostly at night and staged a three-day strike that nearly paralyzed the city. In the end though, the city won out and the 18-wheelers have been consigned to night duty ever since.
As we flew home to Mexico City, I couldn’t help wonder how such an idea would work in this megalopolis with its horrendous traffic jams. Mexico City residents spend a good part of their day stuck in traffic and it’s not noteworthy for it to take three hours to get from one side of the city to the other during rush hour. And mingled in with Mexico City’s six million personal vehicles are a legion of tractor trailers.
I’m not sure if banning them from the city streets during the day would be feasible - a city of this size certainly depends on reliable deliveries to keep things running smoothly. But the city’s new administration is looking for new and creative ways to ease congestion and the pollution that comes with it.
They’ve already tried forcing city government employees to bike to work one day a month. Maybe officials will look south for more inspiration.
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Guatemala’s election gets bloody
I had last traveled to Guatemala eight years ago, and when we arrived this week to cover Sunday’s presidential election, I could barely recognize the place. Guatemala City’s airport is something out of “The Jetsons,” thanks to a renovation that rightly claims the government is building Central America’s most modern airport. The area around the airport is filled with towering buildings and the skies are crowded with cranes.
But the apparent affluence that greets the visitor is only a mask over horrible violence that has many here spooked ahead of the election. Depending on whom you talk to, Guatemala has perhaps Latin America’s highest murder rate, far outpacing any U.S. city. The political violence (43 candidates killed so far) seems a remnant of darker times until you learn it’s mostly caused by unbelievably brazen drug cartels.
“Everyone here is very nervous,” Sonia Madrid, an office worker told us as we strolled through a posh Guatemala City mall (malls in the Third World all tend to be very posh).
Many people here in Guatemala City favor Otto Perez, a tough-talking (and -looking) former general who promises to wipe out the drug gangs. He’s likely headed to a runoff with Alvaro Colom, a centrist who gets most of his support from rural areas. Some pundits say Colom, who a few months ago seemed to have the race locked up, is headed for trouble in the runoff because rural voters tend to vote in lower numbers if there aren’t also local races on the ballot (as will be the case in the runoff).
One thing that certainly is not a major issue in the election is the role of indigenous Guatemalans. Rigoberta Menchu, perhaps the world’s best known Guatemalan, became the first indigenous woman to run for president, but for a variety of reasons her candidacy never gained traction. She sits at about 3 percent in the polls and talks of continuing her movement in the next election.
Meanwhile, indigenous Guatemalans continue to get a raw deal: while poverty in general has fallen from 56 percent to 51 percent in the general population over the last five years, poverty has actually increased among the indigenous by a couple of points.
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No speech? No problem, but the end of a tradition.
So much fuss for so little action. In what goes down as one of the more anticlimactic moments in recent Mexican politics, President Felipe Calderon handed over his first State of the Nation address to a well-behaved Congress this evening.
A week of intense dealmaking had ended with this: Calderon did not give the address as a speech, as presidents have done for decades; instead he merely handed over the written report and will give his speech Sunday morning in the friendlier confines of the National Palace.
In exchange, legislators with the opposition Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) didn’t disrupt his appearance at the Congress. Last year, PRD lawmakers physically prevented then-President Vicente Fox from taking the stage to give the final State of the Nation speech of his term, a humiliation for the outgoing leader. This year, the lawmakers left the congressional hall as a group before Calderon entered.
The negotiation between Calderon’s National Action Party (PAN) and the PRD likely goes much deeper.
Top PAN officials said this week that the future of electoral reform, perhaps the PRD’s top legislative issue, could be in jeopardy if PRD lawmakers made trouble. The PRD is looking for serious overhauls in the nation’s electoral system in the wake of last summer’s contested presidential election. Many PRD officials believe the presidency was stolen from PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador through fraud.
But the agreement on the State of the Nation address may signal something else: Mexico may not be as ungovernable as the pundits predicted. A large, and perhaps growing movement within the PRD is pushing for more engagement with Calderon’s government to take advantage of the party’s status as the second largest in Congress. This so-called New Left has butted heads with Lopez Obrador, who wants a policy of strict rejection of whatever the “illegitimate” president proposes.
In any event, today’s events probably marked the end of the State of the Nation tradition, once an indispensable part of the Mexican presidency. One former president used to give marathon speeches, beginning in the morning and ending at night. Some predict the address will be written out of the law altogether; others say the future is more handovers of reports.
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