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March 2008
Why doesn’t anyone visit Huatulco?
Back in the 1980’s, the coast of Oaxaca, with its phenomenal beaches and stunning geography, seemed set to be become the next Cancun. Government planners set aside 50,000 acres, moved the existing population to a neighboring town and formed the resort of Huatulco (pronounced Wa-TUL-Ko) in 1984.
So now the Mexican government is basically calling for a do-over. It is spending nearly $1 billion to build a bigger airport, construct a superhighway to Oaxaca and reposition the resort on a scale similar to that of the Riviera Maya. The government is also aggressively courting hoteliers and says it has 2,000 new rooms planned.
I’ve never been to Huatulco, but for those who have been, what do you think of the proposed changes?
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Can the PRD save itself?
The Mexican Left continues to stubbornly implode, and it now appears that the PRD, the left-leaning party that came within a hair of the presidency in 2006, could be headed for a nasty breakup.
A week ago, the PRD held its internal election for party president. The race was between two strong currents within the party: A group of loyalists to former candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador who reject any negotiation with the ruling conservative PAN government, and the New Left, a group of moderate lawmakers who want the PRD to take a more active role in the Congress, where they are the second largest force. The election for party president was supposed to signal which force would be ascendant, and, it was hoped, help unite the fractured party.
Instead, the PRD’s worst nightmare is being birthed. Amid claims of vote fraud, corruption, burning of ballots and even an armed robbery of a polling place in Tamaulipas, neither leading candidate has accepted the results. New Left candidate Jesus Ortega is calling for a vote by vote recount, echoing Lopez Obrador’s “voto por voto” rallying cry from the turbulent summer of 2006.
Needless to say, the PRD’s opponents are taking glee in the party’s misfortunes. The News, Mexico’s English language newspaper, writes in an editorial today that “The PRD internal election couldn’t have gone worse for the leftist party had the PAN written the script.”
And Reforma, a Mexico City daily that is often criticized by the Left, has perhaps the cruelest words for the PRD, comparing it to the authoritarian PRI of days past: “It criticized the old practices of the PRI so much that in the end the PRD has ended up repeating the same tricks that it used to denounce with such fervor,” the paper wrote in an insider’s column today. “The theft of ballots, which was repeated throughout the election, was just one hallmark of the old style that has reappeared in modern times…That’s why there are those who say that the PRD (The Revolutionary Democratic Party) may be revolutionary, but it’s not very democratic.”
The election disaster may be so grave that the party has to re-do it (many voices are calling for an end to the PRD staging its own election and farming it out to a governmental entity). And ironically, the election may end up in the hands of the TRIFE, the nation’s highest electoral court, which is loathed within the PRD because it refused to grant Lopez Obrador’s call for a recount in 2006.
All this has led some observers to speculate that the rift has become unhealable and that whichever faction ends up losing the internal election will create its own splinter party.
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Emos under attack
In the last couple of weeks, a particular subculture of Mexican youths, who dub themselves “emos,” have come under violent attack throughout the country. Two weeks ago in the otherwise quiet colonial capital of Queretaro, mobs of kids attacked the emos in an attempt to force them out of the city’s main plaza. A week later, the violence arrived in Mexico City, when emos who hang out at the Insurgentes Metro stop were attacked by gangs of punks and soccer fans. Rumors of more attacks in Mexico City and the northern state of Durango are floating around the Internet.
So who are these emos, and why so much hate? Emos here in Mexico are bound by a specific fashion style (black clothes, tight jeans, huge bangs, black eye makeup) and ideology: according to several Internet sources, a strong chord of sadness, depression and sense of being misunderstood by the larger society runs through emo thought. Bands like Good Charlotte are emo favorites. And self mutilation is apparently common among kids heavily into the emo scene.
Anger against the emos has come from many quarters: punks and goths who think emos are ripping off their culture, homophobes who don’t find emos masculine enough, and those who simply seem threatened by a group that is so different than the mainstream.
Here are a couple examples of anti-emo anger from a Mexican website: “I HATE EMOS!!! They are not even people, they are so stupid, they cry over meaningless things…My school is infested with them, I want to kill them all!” and “We’ve never seen all the urban tribes unite against one single tribe before…Emos, their way of thinking is for crap, if you are so depressed please do us all a favor and kill yourselves!”
Emos have begun to fight back, organizing marches in Guadalajara and Mexico City. And voices have begun appearing warning of a creeping intolerance in Mexican society. Gilberto Rincón Gallardo, a columnist for the El Porvenir newspaper, argued this week that tolerance is the foundation of any healthy democracy. “If a group of young people like (emos) decides to get together and live life in a certain manner, and doesn’t hurt others, it’s the obligation of the Democratic state to protect them…It’s easy for an eccentric and easily identified minority group to be stigmatized and discriminated against…It’s the responsibility of the authorities to make sure the threats aren’t carried out and the aggressions are punished.”
Emos are by no means a Mexican phenomenon. They are yet another example of a fashion and subculture that has leapt across the border. Yes, the U.S. has its own emos, as this slightly alarmist TV news segment shows us.
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Mexican soccer hits new low: No Olympics
Mexico, it seems, still can’t believe the news: After a performance that is being labeled as “shameful” and “sad,” the Mexican national soccer team has plunged Mexico into a deep funk by getting itself eliminated from the Olympic qualifiers in California. The team tied with Canada, beat up on Haiti, and lost to Guatemala, sealing its fate as a first-round failure, the first time the team hasn’t made it out of the opening round of Olympic qualifiers.
This weekend’s shocking turn of events, against what most agree was weak competition, has led to all manner of soul searching in soccer-mad Mexico.
Francisco Javier Gonzalez, an analyst for Reforma newspaper, writes this morning that perhaps Mexican soccer just isn’t as good as Mexico would like to believe: “We all believed that our soccer was inflated with more than just hot air … What happened in the pre-Olympics was pathetic.”
A bitter Carlos Padilla, Mexico’s chief of mission for the Beijing games, harpooned the national team with this nasty barb: “The result reflects the exact dimension of our level of soccer … I feel cheated.”
The team was made up of the so-called “Golden Generation,” a phalanx of up-and-coming hot shots who were supposed to rejuvenate Mexican soccer. Coach Hugo Sanchez said the team would win a medal in Beijing. Instead, “The generation of gold is now the generation of caca,” writes El Universal columnist Eduardo Brizier Carter. “There’s nothing crueler than confronting reality.”
Mexican advertising’s blurry line
What is a hidden advertisement and what is legitimate banter on a morning talk show? Which lines of dialogue are written by the writers and which written by the advertising department? Forgive Mexican TV viewers if they get confused now and then.
It’s common practice down here for the nation’s big 2 networks - Televisa and TV Azteca - to sell undercover advertising within their popular telenovelas and talk shows. The ads aren’t labeled as such. A talk show host might begin a rant about a certain product or two lovers on a soap opera might suddenly begin discussing a particular candidate.
The latest example involves Pemex, Mexico’s struggling nationalized oil company. The state-owned company recently bought some ad time on at least four programs, several of which are kind of like “The View” or a lighter “Today” show. Earlier this week, the hosts suddenly began talking about the need to do more deepwater oil exploration. On Vecinos, a comedy, modernizing oil extraction became the subject of dialogue.
These were no innocent asides. The theme of Pemex’s modernization is perhaps the most controversial topic in Mexico right now. President Felipe Calderon’s conservative government would like to see some kind of foreign investment in Pemex to give it the funds and technology it needs to get at deepwater oil deposits. The Mexican Left has opposed anything that smells of privatization and claims the company can find the funds it needs if it cleans up corruption. Later this month, Calderon is expected to introduce his version of Pemex reform.
One advertising expert said Pemex executives were trying to lay the groundwork for the reform with the messages. “They are trying to win over the audience before it enters into the legislative debate,” Rafael Garate told the El Universal newspaper.
My first bribe
It had to happen sooner or later. Perhaps the most shocking thing about it was that it came nearly two years into my assignment in Mexico.
Last week, while traveling through the scorching state of Guerrero, I paid my first bribe. My wife Nancy and I were in a small town just south of Acapulco to interview returning migrants from the U.S. when it happened. Hunting for an Internet cafe to send some emails, I drove our rental car through the chaotic downtown streets. The wrong way it turns out. Although there were no signs informing the visitor of the fact, the main street was one-way. The local police were apparently watching, but instead of pulling us over, they waited until we parked and entered the Internet cafe before springing into action. As I typed an email, two motorcycle cops unscrewed our front license plate to take with them.
A friendly street vendor alerted Nancy to the scheme and we rushed outside to see what was going on. The cops said we had violated the law and for that they were taking our license plate. We could get it the next day (a Saturday) although the office might be closed, in which case we would have to wait until Monday. We explained that we were visitors, that the street was unmarked and that taking our license plate did not seem the appropriate response to a minor traffic violation. Nancy managed to keep them from speeding off with our plates, but they eventually left when another motorcycle cop rode up. The new cop said he would get our plate back - all we would have to pay would be 60 pesos (about $6) to get rid of the ticket. I conceded, figuring it was the easiest way to avoid a weekend-long conflagration.
The cop did get our plates back amid much apologizing after the police learned we were also journalists. By this time a small crowd had gathered, chastising the police for shaking us down and backing up our claim that the street was unmarked.
In the end I paid the cop the 60 pesos with change from my pocket. In a way I didn’t feel that bad - I had in fact committed an infraction. But we would learn from residents later that taking license plates from out-of-staters was a regular activity for local police, looking for far juicier bribes than the one we paid.
Mexican food as it should be
We just returned from a weeklong jaunt through Jalisco and Guerrero states, visiting some little pueblos that traditionally send migrants to the U.S. The trip was interesting no doubt, but had the added bonus of featuring some of the finest food we’ve sampled since coming to Mexico. My advice for food lovers coming to Mexico: finagle yourselves some invitations to home-cooked dinners in the rural countryside.
Our second home-cooked meal was much more extravagant. Still in Guerrero state, we found ourselves on the rugged coast south of Acapulco. A local migrant leader was taking us on a tour of an Afro-Mexican town along a salty lagoon, when we ran into the aunt of his driver and associate. Before we could blink, preparations were in motion for a lavish affair: fried fish and crab caught minutes earlier in the lagoon accompanied by fresh coconut water, avocados, and more thick, hand-rolled corn tortillas. The fish and the crab were seasoned with onion, garlic and salt before they were deep fried over a roaring wood fire. Someone ran to the store for Coronas and Cokes. The glow from such a meal is unlike anything you can find at a Mexico City restaurant, and I’ll be savoring those feasts in my mind for years to come.
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Mexico keeps eyes on Texas
As Texas goes to the polls today, the election is getting almost as much attention south of the border, where most newspapers are marveling over the power of Texas Latinos to potentially decide the Democratic nominee.
The election was one of the topics getting the most attention this week in Mexico City at a University of Texas-sponsored conference titled “North America and the Dilemma of Integration.”
Lorenzo Meyer, an international relations professor at the College of Mexico and a well known Mexican pundit, said John McCain’s emergence as the likely Republican candidate was being viewed as good news in Mexico, especially given the tough anti-immigration stance of his rivals. “This was the best that could have happened from the Mexican point of view,” Meyer said, adding that McCain was the likely favorite of conservative President Felipe Calderon’s administration.
On the Democratic side, Meyer said Barack Obama scored points in Austin this week. “He said the U.S. should help strengthen the economy in Mexico so we don’t go there,” Meyer told an overflow crowd at the College of Mexico. “It’s not because of any great friendship (with Mexicans), but because they don’t want us there.”
He said the remaining three major candidates generally have similar views on immigration. “It’s almost the same regardless of who wins,” he said. “All three seem willing to embrace immigration reform. The question, as always, will be the U.S. Congress.”
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