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April 2008
The characters you meet at the cockfights
Of all the ways people have found to make a buck in Mexico, Nicolas Zedillo may have found one of the strangest. We ran into Nicolas last week at the cockfights in San Marcos, Guerrero, about 40 miles from Acapulco. We were there covering a story on migrants who bring gamecocks back home with them for their hometown’s annual fair, and spotted Nicolas selling his magazine, Galleros de la Region, inside the cockfighting ring.
Nicolas spends his time journeying up and down Mexico, hitting every town fair and cockfight he can find. At the cockfights he takes Polaroid pictures of the winners, which he sells to them for about $5. But his real money comes when he convinces them to publish the pictures in his magazine for $50 a shot. Cockfighting is a pretty macho sport in Mexico and many handlers are driven by pride. So it’s not a hard sell to convince cockfighters to buy space in the magazine, especially while they are in the afterglow of their victory and pocketing their winnings.
Nicolas has carved out a unique niche for himself with a pretty captive market. But it’s a tough life, he is quick to tell you. He’s on the road most of the year and because cockfighting is a nocturnal sport in Mexico, works from about 10 p.m. until dawn, in a rough and tumble world where copious amounts of alcohol mix with high stakes gambling. And because he is in small towns at fair time, it’s a chore to find a spare bed.
Judging by his appearance last week, his life on the road has taken a physical toll. When we ran into him he was sporting two large scabs on his nose and a bloodshot eye.
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Record oil prices mean windfall for Mexican government
With the price of oil skyrocketing, the Mexican government is set to reap some unprecedented windfalls from its state-run oil company Pemex. The cost of Mexican crude (which is always priced lower than sweet, light crude) topped $98 a barrel yesterday and experts tell the Reforma newspaper that Mexico could reap $51 billion in oil revenues this year. That is 72 percent more than the $29.9 billion the Mexican government had forecast for 2008.
So what does that windfall mean for Mexico? Officials are hoping it will offset the economic hard times leaching across the border from the United States. A common refrain here is that when the United States sneezes, Mexico catches a cold and there is great worry here that recession in the U.S. could be disastrous for Mexico.
The oil bonanza will also undoubtedly affect the raging debate here over the future of Pemex, which nearly everyone agrees is facing a crisis of declining oil reserves. The conservative government of Felipe Calderon wants to open Pemex up to foreign investment while leftist opponents fight anything with a whiff of privatization. But both sides agree Pemex desperately needs more money to fund badly needed exploration of new reserves and construction of new refineries. It will be interesting to say the least to follow the trail of the extra $21 billion.
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Do not read if hungry: the top taco al pastor
In case you missed it, the story on street food in Mexico City came out yesterday with a short slide show and video (too bad the smells don’t travel through cyberspace). The top taco I tried, hands down, was the taco al pastor at El Huequito near the Eje Central (it’s the one in the picture). Not only are the tacos and accompanying salsas delicious, but the stand is located in one of the funkiest neighborhoods off the beaten path in Mexico City. The streets around the stand are arranged by theme. For example one block is dedicated to stores selling every light fixture you can imagine; another stocks bathroom appliances, another musical instruments. The streets are also filled with street vendors specializing in classic rock bootleg CD’s and pirated television series. And across the street is a very low key artesania market.
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Pirate taxis getting easier to spot
A few months ago, Mexico City authorities unveiled new license plates for legitimate taxis, which should go a long way in putting passengers’ minds at ease. The new plates are highly distinctive, contain a microchip for tracking, and perhaps most importantly, are expensive. The city charged about $600 for the new plates (a good chunk of change in a country where the minimum wage is $6 a day). Re-sale of the plates on the Internet has reached as high as $8,000 since the city stopped selling them.
As a frequent taxi rider myself, the new plates have eased my anxiety a bit. I figure (hopefully not too naively) that criminals won’t pay that much to get access to the plates in hopes of luring unsuspecting passengers. Hordes of pirate taxis still roam the city, but they have become much easier to spot since the new plates came on-line (Previous generations of taxi plates were often stolen and “cloned” making them harder to trust). City police are supposed to impound any pirate taxis they see, but that rarely (if ever) happens.
For those of you planning a trip to the Mexican capital, these are the plates you are looking for (note the colors and the “A” at the beginning - click the pic to make it bigger):
And these are the pirate taxis to avoid (note the license plate - it’s the same plate used by personal autos):
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Pemex reform hits a major snag
This is what the Mexican Congress has looked like since last week, as leftist lawmakers loyal to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador have shut down the legislature in opposition to President Felipe Calderon’s proposed Pemex reform. Lawmakers staged a hunger strike inside the Congress over the weekend and have physically prevented Congress from meeting (sound familiar? the same tactics were used to prevent Vicente Fox from giving his last state of the union address).
It’s looking more and more like Calderon’s PAN and the PRI have come to a general agreement on the essence of the reform proposal. The left-leaning PRD and other left-wing parties are doing everything they can to derail the reform, which they say amounts to a privatizing of Pemex, Mexico’s nationalized oil company. But the PAN and PRI could pass the reform without a single PRD vote, hence the congressional blockade.
Calderon’s proposal calls for allowing private investors to help finance the construction of new refineries and would allow Pemex to enter into joint ventures with private firms.
Yesterday, members of the PAN thought they had come to an agreement to lift the blockade of Congress, agreeing to 12 national debates over the next 50 days. But the deal was reportedly nixed by Lopez Obrador, who has once again become a major player in Mexican politics by spearheading opposition to the reform.
However the congressional standoff ends, it seems clear that energy reform could be weeks or months away. Lawmakers have talked of a special session over the summer to deal with it.
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State Department: Beware the border
The U.S. State Department just re-issued its travel alert for Mexico, citing continued violence along the border between rival drug cartels. The advisory singled out Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana for their recent spikes in kidnappings and executions and also reported that U.S. citizens have been followed and harassed after crossing into Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo. “The situation in northern Mexico remains very fluid,” the advisory reads. “The location and timing of future armed engagements there cannot be predicted.”
Perhaps the most common question I get from relatives and friends back home is whether it’s safe to visit Mexico. With all the news about warring drug cartels, I fear that the perception of Mexico, especially outside of the border areas, is getting twisted. As the travel advisory notes, the vast majority of U.S. visitors to Mexico have no problems whatsoever and most of the violence is aimed at drug traffickers, cops and (yikes) journalists.
While it is true that kidnappings and robberies do occur, they are largely confined to the shadowy underworld. And beyond the border, the chances that an innocent will somehow get caught in the crossfire diminish greatly. My advice is not to let these advisories dissuade you from taking that trip to Guanajuato or Ixtapa or Oaxaca. While it probably is wise to exercise heavy caution in some of the most affected border towns - as the advisory says, avoid neighborhoods with lots of prostitution and drug dealing - traveling to Mexico with a dose of common sense should keep you in good stead.
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Insiders’ guide to best Mexico City food
This week I had the envious task of sampling some of Mexico City’s best street food for an upcoming story (and video). I know, I know, this is a tough job, especially when your biggest worry is how much weight you’re going to put on eating delicious (but frighteningly fatty) foods.
As part of the story, I talked with Jose Iturriaga, perhaps the foremost expert on Mexican street food and an insatiable foodie. Iturriaga is old school and fairly hardcore - he has no patience for the rash of nouveau Mexican fusion restaurants proliferating in the city and even has disdain for the relative newcomers to the street food scene like bistec and chuleta (he does like tacos al pastor though). Anyways, I had the amazing opportunity to pick this gastronomical master’s brain on some of the best places to eat in Mexico City. Here are his picks:
Best Yucatecan restaurant: “Circulo de Sureste” on Lucerna 12 near Bucareli. Best Oaxacan restaurant: “Guelaguetza” on Andalucia and Xola, near the Communications Ministry. Best carnitas: “El Paisa,” a stand on Manzanillo, two blocks east of the market in Roma Sur. Best tacos de cabeza: In the quesadilla market behind the church on the main plaza. (There’s just one cabeza stand) Best tacos de canasta: On the corner of Insurgentes Sur and Extremedura. Best flautas: At Buena Fe, right off the Coyoacan plaza.
I hope to make it to some of these places soon. Meanwhile I’d love to hear if any of you have tried them or have your own personal faves.
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Drug traffickers dressing up as soldiers?
The Mexican military issued a troubling warning yesterday, saying it expected narcos in Ciudad Juarez to begin dressing up as soldiers, raiding homes and businesses and committing human rights violations as part of a campaign to disparage the Mexican Army.
Juarez, which is passing through one of the most violent stages in a pretty violent history, has recently been the scene of anti-military protests at its international bridge. Protesters, who the military argues are planted by the drug cartels, accuse soldiers of human rights abuses and call for their removal from the city. Juarez has suffered through more than 200 executions this year and renewed fighting between rival cartels over the city’s border crossing points. As in other parts of Mexico, the Mexican military has been sent in to confront the narcos.
Some analysts theorize the violence is the result of crackdowns on other parts of the border, like Nuevo Laredo, squeezing cartels, much as U.S. Border Patrol carckdowns squeeze illegal immigration to new areas of the border. So bad have things gotten in Juarez that U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza has called for another travel advisory for the region.
Although it’s unclear whether the Juarez protesters are human rights activists or paid puppets, what is clear is that the Mexican military has been involved in several questionable episodes over the last year. Last June, five people were killed by soldiers at a Sinaloa checkpoint, resulting in the arrest of 19 soldiers. And this week, Mexico’s Human Rights commission concluded that a deadly shootout with supposed narcos in the Sinaloan town of Badiraguato (the hometown of top cartel leader “El Chapo” Guzman) was a fabrication invented by soldiers. The commission found that the shootout was in fact the “execution” of four civilians, committed by soldiers who later invented a story of a gun battle at a checkpoint.
The questions swirling around the Mexican military are important north of the border as well, as the U.S. debates a $1.4 billion drug-fighting aid package (which seems to have gotten seriously bogged down/forgotten in this election year) to Mexico that would see significant amounts going to the Mexican military.
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Obama closes gap in Mexico
Hillary Clinton has led opinion polls of Mexicans largely since the presidential race began. But this week, a new Reforma newspaper poll has Clinton and Barack Obama dead even. While it may be taking liberties to say the poll could portend a shift in Latino voters’ tendencies in the U.S., it’s still interesting to watch Obama’s rise south of the border.
The poll shows 31 percent of Mexicans rooting for Obama and another 31 percent pulling for Clinton. Only 7 percent of Mexicans want John McCain to win, according to the poll. (I recently had a chat with an official in President Felipe Calderon’s administration who was convinced that McCain would surprise everyone and win.) Obama was strongest in the middle of the country, home to Mexico City, and the poorer, more indigenous south. Clinton fared strongest in the northern border states.
The Reforma poll stands in contrast to a poll taken by the rival El Universal newspaper last month, which showed 41 percent of Mexicans preferring Clinton to 27 percent for Obama.
It’s hard to say what accounts for the shift. Certainly the flak over Obama’s pastor, Jeremiah Wright, didn’t get as much play down here, and repeated calls by Democratic big-wigs for Clinton to get out of the race may have changed some minds. And there is no doubt that Obama’s name recognition in Mexico grows by the day.
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Controversial Austin documentary headed to Tribeca
The film chronicles the trial and sentencing of undocumented Mexican immigrant Rosa Jimenez, who was babysitting a two-year-old boy when he choked to death. Prosecutors said Jimenez stuffed a wad of paper towels down his throat; defense attorneys said the choking was an accident. The movie, which presents Jimenez as a victim of out of control Texas justice, has sparked outrage in her native Mexico and a campaign to win her freedom. She is serving a 99-year sentence.The movie, which won the grand prize at the International Human Rights Film Festival in Paris, also explores the relationship between immigrants and the city.
Judging by the flurry of emails I received after first writing about the documentary, both the trial and the documentary have struck a cord with Austinites. Having seen the movie at a film festival here in Mexico City, I can say that it is an emotionally wrenching experience even for people with little knowledge of the case.
