A Tree Grows In Mexico City www.mexico-review.com A bi-weekly March 18, 2012 Mexico City Vol. 01 No. 05 32 pages
Distant Ballots Why It’s Still Hard To Vote From Abroad
0018920360242
Midseason Report Card Mexican Soccer’s Best So Far
Jacarandas and the Fate of the Urban Tree
Baja on High The Peninsula Like You Never Knew It
Sounds of SIlence The Blackout of the Presidential Hopefuls
PEOPLE : POLITICS : CULTURE : TRAVEL FROM MEXICO. IN ENGLISH.
www.mexico-review.com
CONTENTS
Mexico Review March 18, 2012 From the Executive Director By ana maría salazar : 2
They Said It
Quotable quotes by, for and about Mexico : 3
When Silence is Not Golden
A new law forbids the presidential candidates from campaigning until March 30. If its purpose was to sow confusion and stir resentment, it’s been a very quiet success. By TOM BUCKLEY
: Politics : elections : 4
Promoting the Remote Vote
Mexican citizens have the right to vote from abroad. Getting it done is another matter. By angelo young
: Politics : elections : 7
A Call to Peace and Reconciliation
Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to Mexico is all about hope. But it’s not without its challenges.
TEXT & PHOTOS BY DAVID BRACKNEY
: Life & Leisure : DESTINATIONS : 18
Rhapsody in Purple
With its showy pre-spring bloom, the jacaranda is Mexico City’s best-loved tree, even though it’s only been there for a century. Can it inspire the city to take better care of its too-few green spaces? By KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
: Life & Leisure : nature : 24
The Clipperton Project
An unusual expedition that set sail from Mexico on March 1 for the tiny, remote and inhospitable island of Clipperton is based on a bold proposition – that there is no difference between artists and scientists. By KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
: Life & Leisure : science : 28
Swimming Against the Current
A review of the Mexican Soccer League season at the halfway point – its highlights and its disappointments.
Meet three Mexican economists who don’t think like most other economists. By RONALD BUCHANAN
: economy & Finance : Economists : 12
By the Numbers
Does Guadalajara have more trees or cars? Is a Big Mac cheaper in the United States or in Mexico? Are we flying more or less? How tall is the average Mexican? : 15
Selling Baseball in a Soccer Nation
For more information please contact: veg133@hotmail.com 998 887 4479 / 998 252 4731 984 155 8114 nextel (PIN 72*13*46296)
Baja California’s Sierra de San Pedro Mártir National Park is a challenging mountain wilderness that belies the usual impression of the peninsula as a cactusdominated desert. And most of the time, there’s almost nobody there.
BY TRISH BAILEY DE ARCEO
: politics : religion : 10
Now in Cancun!
Another Baja
Fans of Mexican baseball are loyal but few. Efforts are under way to get more people out to the ball game.
Cream of a Mediocre Crop
By tom buckley
: Life & Leisure : sports : 30
Spring Attractions …
Some of the big events to watch for in Mexico throughout the spring. By KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT
: Life & Leisure : events : 32 A Tree Grows In Mexico City www.mexico-review.com A BI-WEEKLY March 18, 2012 Mexico City Vol. 01 No. 05 32 pages
0018920360242
Jacarandas and the Fate of the Urban Tree
By tom buckley
: economy & Finance : marketing : 16
Distant Ballots Why It’s Still Hard To Vote From Abroad
Midseason Report Card Mexican Soccer’s Best So Far
Baja on High The Peninsula Like You Never Knew It
Sounds of SIlence The Blackout of the Presidential Hopefuls
PEOPLE : POLITICS : CULTURE : TRAVEL FROM MEXICO. IN ENGLISH.
: On the cover Jacarandas and other urban trees help soothe the stress of city life. Why aren’t there more of them? Photography by Blanca Robleda
letter
from the executive director
Elections remain a work in progress
editorial
Oscar McKelligan President
Ana María Salazar
Vice President & Executive Director
Fernando Ortiz Legal Adviser
Tom Buckley
Editor in Chief
Kelly Arthur Garrett Managing Editor
Blake Lalonde
associate Editor
Andrea Sánchez
When I was a college student at the Universi-
Editorial Assistant
Daniela Graniel
ty of California at Berkeley in the 80s, I remember reading and writing about the presidential process in Mexico. At the time, the Mexican government was considered to be an authoritarian regime; the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and the government were one and the same. Therefore, “elections” were seen as a process to legitimize the “selection” process (“el dedazo”) headed by the almighty president, who was seen as the leader of the PRI. Although secretive in nature, the outcome was quite predictable. Mexico has changed dramatically since then. Although not a perfect democracy (is there such a thing?) a process has been established wherein candidates from the right or the left have a chance to win. In fact, some argue that in an attempt to assure a fair process, Mexico has gone to extremes: Elections here are among the most expensive in the world ($5 per vote in Mexico compared to just over $1 per vote in the United States and less than $3 per vote in Europe). In addition, there are very strict controls on the media in an effort to ensure equal access. That’s why, even though the presidential election is just over three months away, we are in the middle of a 45-day campaign “blackout” that has created widespread criticism. In this edition, Tom Buckley’s article “When Silence is Not Golden” (pp. 4-7) is the best piece written on this extremely and confusing stage of the 2012 election. In addition to the elections, Pope Benedict’s visit to Mexico beginning on March 23 (“A Call to Peace and Reconciliation,” pp. 10-11) is a significant event.
art director sales
Verónica Guerra de Alberti Cancún Representative
Abril de Aguinaco Cabo Representative
Iker Amaya Álvaro Sánchez U.S. representatives
Contributors Angelo Young Ronald Buchanan Trish Bailey de Arceo David Brackney Blanca Robleda Bo a r d o f D i r e c t o r s Oscar McKelligan Ana María Salazar Yurek McKelligan Fernando Ortiz
“Mexico Review” ES UNA PUBLICACIÓN QUINCENAL PROPIEDAD DE YUMAC S.A. DE C.V. CON OFICINAS EN AVENIDA DURANGO No. 243-7o PISO, COL. ROMA, DEL. CUAUHTÉMOC, C.P. 06700, TEL. 2455-5555 Y (949)6804336 EN CALIFORNIA USA, FECHA DE IMPRESIóN 6 DE MARZO DEL 2012. “Mexico Review” INVESTIGA SOBRE LA CALIDAD DE SUS ANUNCIANTES PERO NO SE RESPONSABILIZA CON LAS OFERTAS RELACIONADAS A LOS MISMOS. ATENCIóN A CLIENTES EN ZONA METROPOLITANA 5203-4943. LOS ARTíCULOS Y EL CONTENIDO EDITORIAL SON RESPONSABILIDAD DE SUS AUTORES Y NO REFLEJA NECESARIAMENTE EL PUNTO DE VISTA DE LA PUBLICACIÓN, NI DE LA EDITORIAL, TODOS LOS DERECHOS ESTAN RESERVADOS. PROHIBIDA LA
With so much going on in Mexico this year, can you afford not to subscribe to Mexico Review? Visit www.mexico-review.com and follow us at @MexicoReview. Ana María Salazar Executive Director anamaria.salazar@mexico-review.com
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2 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
Didn’t Krauze Write This One
C h e e ch , M e e t C h o n g
t’s the same old whiny discourse: If those pinches gringos would just stop being such stoners and
?
“There has just been published an extremely noteworthy novel by a narrator who has been called to fill the gap in Mexican letters left by the late Juan Rulfo: ‘Mexico, la gran esperanza,’ by the State of Mexico native Enrique Peña Nieto … It transcends the great works of science fiction to establish itself as the best creative effort that any writer has achieved so far in this century.”
– Literary critic Sergio González Rodríguez, in a satirical review of the recently released non-fiction political book by the PRI presidential candidate, who in November couldn’t name three books that he’d read, and confused the author of one that he did name.
H
they said it...
potheads, then there wouldn’t be any problems.” – Academic journalist and former Foreign Relations Secretary Jorge Castañeda, chiding the Calderón administration for blaming the United States for Mexico’s drug trafficking crisis, urging it instead to seek a bilateral consensus for a new strategy.
Size Matters “The problems are very big, and the candidates are very small.” – Novelist Carlos Fuentes, analyzing the Mexican
Free Advice
e should change his pollster.”
– PRI presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto’s deadpan response to President Calderón’s leaked assertion that an internal poll indicates that Josefina Vázquez Mota, the candidate of Calderón’s PAN, is running only 4 percentage points behind Peña Nieto, though all other polls up to that time (late February) put the gap in double figures. The president was criticized for supposedly involving himself in the race – a no-no under Mexican election laws – by revealing the poll to a private gathering of bankers.
presidential hopefuls.
Hold the Cheese, Please “ The ambassador considered inviting them not just to show that the incident has been settled , but also to show them a little more of Mexican culture, since it’s clear from the way they expressed themselves that they don’t know it very well .” – A spokesperson for Eduardo Medina Mora, Mexico’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, explaining the possibility that an edition of the British automotive show Top Gear may be recorded in Mexico sometime in 2012, a year after hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May called Mexicans “fat,” “lazy” and “flatulent,” and described Mexican food as “vomit with cheese.”
What’s In Those Things?
By eating these
ecological tortillas, we can stay young longer.
– Grain science researcher Juan de Dios Figueroa, on a new whole grain tortilla made with a less contaminating process, being developed by Cinvestav, the research center based in the National Polytechnic Institute.
“
Why Not Siberia?
There’s a lot of good players who move. Bad players, they get released or traded, or they go play in Mexico. Good players, they’re moved to another position.
”
– Ozzie Guillén, Florida Marlins manager
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 3
elections
PHOTO: Courtesy of Los Pinos
politics
President Calderón speaks to a business group in Mexico City. Critics say his public appearances serve as campaign events for his party’s presidential candidate during the “blackout.”
When Silence is Not Golden
The new electoral law establishes a 45-day ‘blackout’ in the middle of the campaign. But nobody seems to know exactly what it means. By tom buckley
F
our months before Election Day in the midst of what promises to be an entertaining three-way campaign for president … and the candidates are hiding from the spotlight? What gives? The technicalities of the 2007 electoral reform are now evident and we are seeing a clear example of buyer’s remorse. Even worse, the candidates are so unsure of the legal ramifications that they prefer to err on the side of caution during a 45day “blackout” ahead of the official 90-day campaign period that begins on March 30. 4 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
Political parties, the media and the public wait awkwardly for the election authorities to clear up the uncertainty. The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) hesitantly sifts through the new law, clearly uncomfortable at having to make sense of a controversial reform that basically implied that the authorities were incompetent, if not corrupt. The reform was a target of criticism even while it was being debated in Congress. Sponsors of the new law have been labeled as bitter losers acting out of spite, seeking revenge against those they blamed for losing the 2006 election.
Vindictive Legislation
“We have walked into a blackout that suffocates us,” wrote former Labor Secretary Javier Lozano. “The law is derived from the rancor of post-electoral conflict. One can imagine that the losers in 2006 made a list of all the reasons why they think they lost and all the actors whom they believed deserved the blame for their collapse and then impulsively wrote a law to ‘correct’ the circumstances.” Liébano Sáenz – the personal secretary to President Ernesto Zedillo, the last PRI president before the National Action Party (PAN) won Los Pinos in 2000 – agrees
with Lozano. “The legislation was designed as an act of vengeance targeting those deemed guilty of depriving their favorites of election,” he said. Support for the bill primarily came from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) – which finished a historically worst third in the 2006 presidential election and blamed the IFE and its then-president Luis Carlos Ugalde – and the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which saw candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador lose to Felipe Calderón by a whisker. Beyond the partisan finger-pointing however, political analysts have had a field day identifying the new law’s flaws At the same time, President Calderón intensified the disquiet by discussing a poll at a private meeting that only increased the uncertainty. Wading in Uncertainty
By Feb. 14, four presidential candidates were officially registered with the IFE and the stage was set for the July 1 vote. But no sooner was the public aware of who the finalists were than the candidates were forced into silence. The new electoral law established that political parties could hold primaries or other internal selection processes from Dec. 10 to Feb. 10. Only the PAN conducted a primary; the PRD and the PRI each only had one candidate register. Both the PRD (which held an internal poll) and the PRI (which saw one potential candidate drop out before the primary) believed that selecting a candidate early would serve to avoid a divisive primary battle. However, the new law specified that parties conducting primaries were free to engage in public media campaigns. The implication was that parties with a single candidate heading into the primary season were not permitted to campaign. The very people who formulated the new law cried foul. The IFE and the Federal Electoral Tribunal (Trife) were called upon to interpret it and offer guidelines so that parties and candidates would not face fines. When that was offered, the IFE was criticized. The PRD and the PRI complained that the PAN was essentially getting advantageous publicity. It wasn’t that easy however. The law did not adequately explain how primary debates could be held and the media was drawn into the controversy. Radio and TV interviews and informal debates were
brought into question as the IFE hinted that the media could face fines for “illegally staging debates and/or providing extralegal campaign publicity.” So now, media did not know how to conduct operations during the primary campaign while election authorities continued deliberations about possible penalties. But that was pushed into the background as the blackout rolled in, silencing the campaigns. Public Kept in the Dark
El Universal columnist Ezra Shabot laments the current situation. The absence of regulations that clearly specify what can or can’t be done has transferred to IFE and Trife the responsibility of interpreting a bad law, he said. Lozano, now a senatorial candidate, wrote a column in El Universal that he prefaced by writing: “I’m not sure if I’m violating the law by writing this column. There is total uncertainty.” The immediate result is that the voting public loses out during the 45-day blackout, wrote novelist and historian Isabel Turrent. “We’ll reach three months prior to Election Day and the electorate won’t really know any of the concrete policy and platform proposals of the parties and their presidential candidates,” she said. Sáenz calls it a form of limbo full of uncertainty. Lozano says the media is forced to act too carefully and the law is abominable. “At end of the day, democracy is freedom, choice, participation, conscience and reason,” Lozano wrote in his column. “Voice and debate are essential parts of this. Silence is an undesirable intruder.” Sen. Diódoro Carrasco half-heartedly defended the law without seeming to denote the irony of his words after pointing out that neither parties nor candidates can directly discuss their policy platforms in public settings. “The IFE has declared that the freedom of expression of candidates and the right of the media to carry out journalistic responsibilities are protected … parties need not be silent. They can disseminate propaganda of a generic nature. They simply can’t solicit votes,” wrote Carrasco in his Milenio column. The IFE also added to the confusion when it announced on Feb. 14 (presumably with a straight face) that “candidates are
allowed to consent to interviews during the blackout but they can in no way promote their candidacy.” Carrasco recommends that parties and candidates effectively exercise selfcensorship. “I suggest that candidates and parties devote their time to planning campaign strategy for when the official season begins,” he said. On the other hand, a giant loophole remains. The law does not stipulate how candidates can use social media and the Internet. The assumption is that candidates have complete freedom to campaign via the Internet since restrictions are not specified in the new law. PRI candidate Enrique Peña Nieto announced on Feb. 19 that he’d be “taking refuge in the Internet” during the blackout. His campaign team put together a team of 10,000 bloggers and tweeters to promote their candidate. Media gets Share of the Blame
While the media wonders what punitive actions the IFE might possibly take as a result of interviews and roundtable discussions with candidates, some critics are taking aim at the media. Political commentator Francisco Valdés Ugalde didn’t pull any punches. “Our deformed fourth estate decries the new law, shouting to all the world that freedom of expression is at stake,” he said. “In reality, they are whining about the loss of millions of pesos in advertising.” Valdés Ugalde says he believes the blackout is an “abomination,” but he remains insistent that it is necessary because of the oligarchic structure of the media. “The media in Mexico was not built to provide the necessary information for a modern society. It was set up to support the political powers that be [and not] to help develop a free and liberal society.” Sen. Carrasco seems to agree: “The law was aimed at reducing the inequalities of a media that has historically distorted the electoral process.” On the other hand, Sáenz argues that the media did not act unfaithfully in 2006. “They acted within the rules that existed … actually, the conduct of the parties and the federal government were excessive and obscene.” Ezra Shabot takes a different tack, arguing that the reform will actually facilitate abuses since it placed full control of media funding in the hands of the IFE. March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 5
politics
elections
“The law is so restrictive with regard to control of money that it makes it impossible to trace illicit funding,” Shabot said. “If there is suspicion of any such transgression via favorable interviews or news coverage, it will be impossible to investigate because there aren’t supposed to be payments of any kind to the media by parties. As such, media are not obliged to keep records and thus there will be no accounts for authorities to inspect.” Carrasco and Sáenz both support the funding restrictions, however. Carrasco has said that the sponsors of the law were responding to the public’s desire to have shorter and less expensive campaigns. Steady Flow of Complaints
The situation remains warped, says Silvia Gómez Tagle, another political columnist. “The candidates are silenced, but federal and local governments, businessmen and the church are all free to influence the political climate,” she wrote. The Catholic Church came under increased scrutiny after a diocesan letter outlining whom Catholics should not vote for was made public. The Constitution forbids religious entities from taking part in politics, specifying that priests can’t take part in campaigns and the church can’t express support for candidates.
The PRD – and to a lesser extent, the PRI – demanded that the Catholic Church be punished. But technically, the diocesan letter does not violate the law because it provided an outline of who “not” to vote for (those who favor abortion, gay marriage, etc.) and does not mention any party or candidate by name. A few days later, President Calderón was accused of violating the blackout after a private meeting with bankers in late February. During his speech, Calderón showed a poll that indicated his party’s candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, had narrowed the deficit with Peña Nieto significantly. Atfirst,PRIandPRDpoliticiansmocked the poll as fabricated since Peña Nieto had been 20 points up in most polls. But almost simultaneously, the accusations emerged. Calderón had surely violated the blackout, it was alleged, and formal complaints were soon filed with the IFE. Shabot shrugs at this criticism. “The unspoken rule that declares the president should remain outside the electoral process is absurd,” he said. “The law specifies only that the president – like governors – can’t divert public funds for use in campaigns, but his right to express his opinion and voice support for his party’s candidate is very natural in a true democracy.”
Despite this logic, the concerted efforts of the Fox administration to defeat López Obrador in 2006 were criticized (though not punished) by the Trife. Fox’s subsequent boasts that he “defeated” López Obrador understandably prompted a defensive reaction from the PRI and the PRD. President Calderón seemed to acknowledge the rationale of this sensitivity by canceling an official trip to the state of Tabasco. Administration officials said Calderón was exercising “prudence” since there is a similar blackout in Tabasco because there is a gubernatorial election in July. The day before, the president had promised to act more as a statesman and less as a party cheerleader. Calderón also met with PRI officials to assure them that he would be more careful during the remainder of the campaign and PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell publicly announced a “vote of confidence” for Calderón. Naturally, the PRD criticized the PRI as “naïve” while also suggesting that the PRI and the PAN had actually agreed to join forces to attack the leftist alliance headed by the PRD. But that can’t be repeated on the campaign trail because the 2007 reform also makes it illegal to denigrate one’s opponents.
Promoting the Remote Vote
PRI president Pedro Joaquín Coldwell shows reporters a copy of the formal complaint his party filed with the Attorney General’s Office alleging that the government removed the top elections prosecutor for political reasons.
Despite more than adequate funding, Mexico’s election law does not go far enough to enfranchise migrants in the United States.
PHOTO: Courtesy of the Institutional Revolutionary Party
By angelo young • Photos: mexico review
6 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
K
aroll González is one of millions of expatriates eligible to participate in Mexico’s electoral process. But like most of her compatriots, the 28-year-old marketing specialist who has spent most of her adult life in the United States will not be casting a ballot in the July 1 presidential election. “I voted for Josefina in the PAN primary,” she said, expressing enthusiasm for the nomination of Josefina Vázquez Mota by the National Action Party, the first major party to boast a female presidential candidate. “However I won’t be able to vote in July because I didn’t have time to renew my IFE card.”
González was referring to the Federal Electoral Institute voter card, a modern, hologram-printed photo ID aimed at combatting election fraud. The card can only be obtained or renewed in-person from IFE offices inside Mexico. While González maintains strong family ties back home in Guadalajara, she only travels to Mexico on occasion for work, vacations or visits with family and friends. By the time the PAN announced that Vázquez Mota was its candidate, the deadline for absentee voter registration had already passed. Mexico is unique among democracies that permit expatriate absentee voting, says James McCann, political science
professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who has surveyed political participation of Mexicans in the United States. “The Mexican system might be unique in termsoftheburdenitplacesonexpats,”hetold Mexico Review. “Last year, the Colombians were permitted to vote. They could vote at the consulates. They could vote in both the legislative and presidential elections, and it doesn’t take much to get registered.” Falling Short
The standard procedure for absenteevoter registration and ballot-casting varies March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 7
Absentee Vote Process Examined
Q&A
James McCann is a political science professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He has conducted extensive surveys of Mexican immigrants living in the United States. He recently spoke to Mexico Review about Mexican immigrants in the United States in the context of Mexico’s federal elections.
Would allowing more participation in local state elections help to increase participation of Mexicans abroad in elections back home? To use a common American phrase, it would give them “more skin in the game.” But for what it’s worth, I believe the biggest impediment has to do with the administration of the expatriate vote, rather than an inherent lack of interest in transnational politics. Based on surveys I conducted with Mexican-born respondents across the United States, there is a fair amount of interest in politics in Mexico, and a noteworthy amount of intellectual engagement.
Is low voter turnout a matter of a cultural or political divorce from events in Mexico?
There is a deep desire among many expatriates to return to Mexico, and when I looked at the data, it surprised me how many people report daily contact with friends and family in Mexico. It’s also astounding when you look at the weekly or more frequent contact – that’s the typical Mexican immigrant in the United States. So we’re talking about a group of people fairly well connected to their country of origin and [paying] attention to transnational civic life.
So why the low turnout?
There are now a couple of dozen countries around the world that extend expatriate voter rights to their emigrants. The Mexican system might be unique in terms of the burden it places on expats. For instance, to take Colombia as an example, last year the Colombians were permitted to vote. They could vote at the consulates. They could vote in both the legislative and presidential elections, and it doesn’t take much to get registered. In the case of Mexico, for understandable reasons, the Mexicans since the 1990s have invested substantial funds in fraud-proofing electoral credentials. This makes sense given the lengthy history of voting fraud. But what that means is that since IFE doesn’t permit external voting registration – you have to have a current credential – a lot of immigrants let their credentials lapse.
A Mexican expat must still go back to Mexico to renew the IFE credential? Yes. As in 2006, IFE offices within Mexico’s national boundaries were tasked with issuing fresh credentials or renewing those that had lapsed.
Even for state elections?
Right, because voter registration is based in the states. You register in your state for state and federal elections. The
8 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
central point is that the Mexican government places relatively large burdens on its expatriate population. Also, the deadline to solicit an expatriate ballot comes almost six months before the general election. Let’s put this into perspective. In the United States, if you surveyed 10 people at a bus stop today, how many of them would say that they’re following the American general election, and they will be requesting an absentee ballot by April, if one is needed? Having a deadline approximately six months before the day of the election is on its own an enormous burden; but then to process it through postal solicitation, having all the proper documentation, photocopies – it’s effectively a significant “poll tax” on expatriates, even if IFE no longer expects the absentee voter to pay for international postage in 2012, as it did in 2006.
Some people perceive that this process is burdensome by design, that Mexican expatriates are viewed as generally aligned with one party.
Many Mexican immigrants report identifying with a Mexican political party, even after settling in the United States for many years. The most common identification is with the PAN (National Action Party), though there are also substantial percentages that claim a connection to the PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) or PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party). What you suggest about strategic behavior on the part of the political parties is accurate to a point. Reforms within Mexico to extend voting rights to expatriates were delayed in the 1990s largely out of partisan concerns. The PRI in particular saw little reason to expand the electorate in this direction.
Is there any question in Mexico as to whether Mexicans abroad – especially full time expatriates and dual-citizenship holders – should even have a right to vote?
Some ambivalence exists about extending voting rights abroad. I say that based on various kinds of polls that have been conducted within Mexico in recent years. It’s understandable why this would be. The whole idea of having an external voting community that will have as much power at the ballot box as you do as an internal citizen, but would not be subjected to the law and might have different opinions than people who are within the confines of the country could be distasteful.
by country, but only Mexico prevents its citizens from registering and voting through consulates or embassies. The window for registration is narrow, too; it began in October – no applications submitted before then were accepted – and ended on Jan. 15. “Having a deadline approximately six months before the day of the election is on its own an enormous burden,” said McCann. “But then to process it through postal solicitation, having all the proper documentation, photocopies – it’s effectively a significant ‘poll tax’ on expatriates, even if IFE no longer expects the absentee voter to pay for international postage in 2012, as it did in 2006.” In 2006, the first year Mexico allowed expats to vote, IFE counted 54,780 valid mail-in registrations worldwide, mostly from the United States. This time around, IFE announced new efforts to spur growth in absentee voting. It dispatched election officials to 30 U.S. cities and offered postagepaid service so voters did not have to pay
the cost of sending paperwork through certified mail, which in 2006 cost expats in the United States about $8 per registration. At the same time, Mexico has budgeted less money to promote the expatriate vote: $9.7 million including the $3.1 million budgeted to pay for postage. In 2006, the budget was $20 million. In February, the election authorities announced that they had received 61,687 registrations worldwide, 11 percent more than the number of valid registrations received in 2006. (IFE must still verify these registrations and submit its final list of eligible absentee voters.) About 76 percent of these applications came from the United States. Over half of U.S.-based absentee applications were received from eligible Mexican voters living in the states of California, Texas and Illinois. In 2006, IFE received 32,632 valid mail-in votes; it would be a surprise if the number of absentee votes in this election were to reach 40,000.
Unmet Enthusiasm
Despite the efforts, Mexico lags among countries that allow citizens to register and vote from abroad. The Philippines, a nation with a sizable population of overseas workers and 20 million fewer citizens than Mexico, is a case in point. Filipino expatriates sent nearly 350,000 absentee ballots in their country’s 2010 national and local elections. McCann, who in 2006 conducted political awareness surveys with eligible Mexican voters across the United States, says the low turnout has little to do with a lack of interest in what’s happening in the country. “Based on surveys I conducted with Mexican-born respondents across the United States, there is a fair amount of interest in politics in Mexico, and a noteworthy amount of intellectual engagement,” he said. “I think if you want to tell a story about low voter turnout relative to the enormous size of the population, we must first recognize the costs of participation. It is not chiefly a lack of enthusiasm.”
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A lot of media coverage of this issue seems to revolve around a narrative that Mexicans in the United States are not interested in the elections.
I think if you want to tell a story about low voter turnout relative to the enormous size of the population, we must first recognize the costs of participation. It is not chiefly a lack of enthusiasm. I read a story recently where the reporter basically said he went to the local consulate and witnessed Mexicans walk past the IFE table and then he quotes a man saying he’s not interested in the elections. I think if you visited Mexico itself and went to an IFE station, you’d see the same thing. And look at Americans: How many of us are hanging out at our local elections office at the county courthouse? That’s not a good marker for judging enthusiasm. There are better indicators. :Angelo Young
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March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 9
P
religion
A Call to Peace and Reconciliation
reparations are in full swing for Pope Benedict XVI’s first visit to Mexico in the city of León, Guanajuato. Civil and ecclesiastical authorities in León are expecting nearly 300,000 faithful to participate in the Sunday, March 25, Mass as well as over 100,000 accredited youth volunteers, 200 bishops and 3,000 priests. The papal flight alone will carry 70 journalists. This is the first time a popular event of this magnitude has been held in León, so the city has already cancelled school on Friday, March 23, and there have been suggestions for various industries to speed up activities so that the workers could take Friday off as well. The reasons for this are mainly practical, since the Pope’s visit and the thousands of visitors will most likely bring traffic to a standstill.
The Holy Father’s historic first journey to Mexico will both encourage and challenge the Mexican faithful.
Photo: Mexico review
politics
by Trish Bailey de Arceo
“I am expecting the
pope’s visit to give us new hope.” Archbishop Christophe Pierre, papal nuncio to Mexico
Rumors of Violence
10 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
A Whirlwind Visit Friday, March 23: Carpenter José Ernesto Fernández works on a chair to be used by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Mexico.
problems, much less violence, right at this time when His Holiness Benedict XVI is coming. Consider yourselves warned.” In response to these threats, the Archdiocese of León, headed by Archbishop José Guadalupe Martín Rábago, issued a call for peace of its own on Feb. 14. “Once again we tell them, God is always ready to forgive you,” said the statement. “He asks only that you recognize your errors, repent of them, stop offending him by injuring his children, make reparation for the damage done, and leave aside this activity of death.” In spite of these rumors of violence, there have been no changes to the pope’s plans to visit the city. Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to Mexico, stated that the Holy Father “is not afraid to come to Mexico. On the contrary, he feels protected by
the extraordinary love that Mexicans have for the Holy Father.” A message of hope
Not one to shy away from visiting dangerous places, Pope Benedict’s trip has a clear purpose: to imbue hope and a renewed effort for peace in a people that has been discouraged in recent years by an unprecedented level of drug-related violence. In a Jan. 3 interview with W Radio Mexico, Archbishop Martín Rábago said, “In the environment we are living in today, so full of worries and weighted down with pessimism, we need a voice we can trust to invite us to hope, to guarantee that the Lord’s strength is with us, to reconcile with each other, and to know we can be builders of a more just world.” He confirmed that the pope’s visit is
“fundamentally to evangelize, to make present the word of God, and to invite us to reconcile and be bearers of hope.” Archbishop Pierre likewise believes that the main purpose of the visit is to encourage and challenge the Mexican people to rise above their difficult circumstances and seek a new beginning. “I am expecting the pope’s visit to give us new hope,” he said. “It seems to me that that is what we lack. Society is a bit overwhelmed with the violence, the poverty, the migration problems ... they are problems we yearn to see solved.” No one expects the pope’s visit to magically solve the country’s problems, said Archbishop Pierre, but the visit will serve as a strong push in a more proactive direction, especially for the nation’s leaders. This pope’s presence in Mexico “will not give us hope overnight, but if there is
more hope, then the politicians will find the strength to look for solutions. May we have the courage and the capacity to dialogue to find solutions,” he said. That courage and hope is present in many Mexicans, he added, since the vast majority fervently desire peace, and find themselves overshadowed by the criminal activities of a few. “We should not say that there is only violence in Mexico,” he said. “Of course there is violence and there are many problems, but Mexico is more than that.” For León’s archbishop, this visit is a chance to mobilize the silent majorities and to help them discover their calling to be a powerful force for peace in a troubled land. “We hope that we will prepare ourselves to receive the Pope’s message in such a way that it will bear permanent fruits,” said Archbishop Martín Rábago.
Photo: Reuters
While many are preparing enthusiastically for what will surely be an historic visit, there are others who worry it may be an occasion for drug cartels to make a statement to the world, possibly even putting the pope’s life in danger. The U.S. intelligence agency Stratfor has issued a security memo stating that increased violence is likely in the state of Guanajuato, mainly because of the migration of competing drug cartels. The memo was based on statements by Zeta leader Héctor Daniel Reyes that the Zetas were working on taking over León, along with intel that Jalisco’s Nueva Generación cartel was making inroads in the state. Meanwhile, León’s resident cartel, the Caballeros Templarios, issued a warning and a call for peace by hanging 11 banners, or “mantas,” in strategic places throughout the city. One of the banners read: “Citizens of Guanajuato: A few hours ago, the attorney general was the object of a sneak attack. The violence is going to increase. We are here in the state to suppress the onslaught of our adversaries. To those from the state of Michoacán, we only warn you that we do not want more groups in the state of Guanajuato. Confrontations will be inevitable, so consider yourselves warned.” A similar message targeted at the Nueva Generación cartel read: “Nueva Generación, we want Guanajuato to be at peace, so don’t even think about creating
Pope Benedict XVI arrives at León airport and is officially welcomed by President Felipe Calderón, Archbishop José Guadalupe Martín Rábago of León, and representatives of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference.
Saturday, March 24:
Pope Benedict XVI will meet with President Calderón and his delegation in the evening. Afterward, he will greet and bless children and all the faithful in La Paz square.
Sunday, March 25:
The Holy Father will preside at Mass in Silao’s Bicentennial Park, near the monument to Christ the King. Representatives of the faithful from all 91 Mexican dioceses will be present. In the afternoon, he will celebrate Vespers in the León cathedral and deliver a message to all the bishops of Mexico, as well as representatives of the Bishops’ Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Monday, March 26:
The Holy Father will depart for Cuba from the León airport.
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 11
economy &finance
economists
Swimming Against the Current
Three analysts have made their names by refusing to accept the consensus about Mexico’s financial ‘reality’ By ronald buchanan • Photos: tom buckley
12 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
standard of public schooling makes a mockery of the basic human right of economic opportunities. NAFTA has boosted Mexico’s international trade, but other nations, such as Brazil and Chile, have done better at trade without the benefit of a NAFTA. And, while NAFTA was proclaimed as boosting more and better-paid jobs in Mexico, in recent years, wages have dropped and the size of the industrial workforce has shrunk. So what is the government going to do about it? Sit tight, is the only answer, behind a huge wall of billions of dollars that could otherwise have been spent on building the roads, the educational opportunities and the police force that Mexico urgently needs. Sit tight was a sound option, of course, in the wake of the 1994-95 collapse of the economy. But since then, Mexico has frittered away chance after chance to develop vibrant economic growth. The “sit tight brigade” includes senior officials from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the National Action Party (PAN) who have comprised a technocratic elite for nearly a decade. They are backed by a chorus of supporters in newspapers and broadcasting though there are a few voices that refuse to accept that Mexico is condemned to poverty, inequality and low growth. All leading opinion polls show that an overwhelming majority believes that Mexico’s economy is doing badly and the country is on the right road. Yet nearly all the economic analysts whose views are published in the media both in Mexico and abroad, claim that the economy is on the
right road, even if some adjustments are required. However, there are alternative voices. Here are three of them.
Photo: El Universal
I
nternational financial organizations, policy makers of the world’s leading industrialized nations such as the United States and Europe and chief executives of global corporations all agree: the Mexican economy is well managed and sound. They may quibble about the need for reforms to the labor law and the energy sector, but the consensus is that the economy is solid. With record central bank reserves of $148 billion, it is, as they say, armor-plated. And Europe should do the same, President Felipe Calderón told European leaders at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. They “should create a firewall to prevent the spread of panic,” he said. The references to firewalls and armor are probably less than fortunate, in view of the security measures taken amid the war being waged against organized crime. But is there real strength, true resilience, in the Mexican economy? There certainly is in upscale neighborhoods of Mexico City, such as La Condesa and San Ángel. But not in the squalor of the rabbit warren of streets just behind the National Palace, or in the urban wasteland of Chimalhuacán, State of Mexico. At least about one-third of the workforce is in the euphemistically labeled “informal economy,” a Wal-Mart of the Mob. And it is growing. And there are almost 2 million so-called “ni nis” (young people who neither – “ni” in Spanish – go to school, nor – also “ni” in Spanish – work). Educational standards are the lowest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And the low
ROGELIO RAMÍREZ DE LA O This descendant of Genovevo de la O, the right-hand man of Emiliano Zapata, was educated at the national public university
(UNAM) before completing a PhD at Cambridge University in England. Mexico is awash with intellectuals but their academic curriculums are often of little importance in the real world. Not so Ramírez de la O. The senior levels of the government service and leading consultancies are dominated by the graduates of Mexican private universities with post-graduate degrees from the United States. The fees of the private universities are too expensive for the sons and daughters of the middle class. Yet an education from universities such as the ITAM – the alma mater of most of
the top people in government – is all but essential for young people to get to the top of the tree. Far from the democracy of which the government boasts, senior government posts have become a birthright. The post-graduate career of Ramírez de la O is also significant, because Cambridge has been a defender of the traditions of John Maynard Keynes which – until the 2009 world economic crisis broke – were decried by many leading U.S. economists and the Mexicans who were their students. So Ramírez de la O has been a voice crying in the wilderness. His Ecanal consultancy, however, has provided his clients
with invaluable early warnings of serious problems in the economy that pro-government analysts were unwilling or unable to recognize, such as the financial collapse of late 1994 in the wake of the administration of President Carlos Salinas. Ramírez de la O is a firm supporter of the left-wing candidate in this year’s upcoming election, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In fact, López Obrador says that if he wins the election, he will appoint Ramírez de la O to head the Finance Secretariat. Ramírez de la O writes a weekly column in the daily El Universal. March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 13
By the Numbers
economists
MACARIO SCHETTINO In intellectual terms, Schettino is not so much a oneman band as a oneman Berlin Philharmonic. His education includes qualifications as a chemical and systems engineer at the Monterrey Tec, a master’s in economics at Mexico City’s CIDE graduate school and a doctorate in management from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, he currently aspires to a doctorate in history. And that’s far from all. Schettino writes about economic, political and social affairs in the daily El Universal, he broadcasts on radio and television and he is a professor at the Monterrey Tec. In addition, he writes academic papers and has 15 – our maybe 17 – books to his name.
74
Number of tons of signs, banners, tents and other illegal election-related advertising removed by Mexico City authorities as of Feb. 27, according to the news agency EFE. The offending ads totaled 100,471.
600,000
Estimated number of trees in the 3,794-square-kilometer metropolitan zone of Guadalajara, according to the Jalisco Ecological Collective.
712,286
“The economy’s going to collapse.”
Number of automobiles in the same area.
Macario Schettino, in 1994
Most of all, he is an iconoclast, a destroyer of dogmas in a country with many dogmas that need to be destroyed. When I met Schettino in late 1994 I was in the middle of a series of interviews for an article for publication in the magazine of the World Economic Forum. Business leaders and analysts had all told me that President Salinas, in the closing weeks of his administration, was a brilliant leader who had set the basis for the emergence of Mexico as a first-world economy. Then I asked Schettino. “The economy’s going to collapse,” he said in matterof-fact tones. And it did, of course. In fact, he has said in his articles and books that the Mexican economy never achieved success throughout the whole of the last century. But what about the “Mexican miracle” of the 60s? The world economy was growing at the time, he says. Only in Mexico do people regard as a miracle that the economic growth of the rest of the world is matched by Mexico. In his most recent book “Cien años de confusión” – alas, so far only in Spanish – he wades into the myths of the Mexican Revolution and the myths that politicians have created surrounding its supposed success. 14 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
Photo: La jornada
Photo: El Universal
economy &finance
LEÓN BENDESKY Bendesky, a UNAM grad, holds a doctorate from Cornell University in the United States, and postgraduate studies from Cambridge University in England. He has combined an academic career – as a professor and researcher for, among others, UNAM and the CIDE think tank – with one of that of a consultant in the private sector and for international organizations. Bendesky’s regular Monday morning front-page column in the leading left-wing daily La Jornada aims to set the economic agenda for the week in global terms. Far from releasing the economy’s potential, he says, the financial stability of which the government boasts, condemns it to near-stagnation. “Stability is basically anchored on the exchange rate; inevitably,
that means low productivity and … the inability to compete in many world markets,” Bendesky says. Social policy, he adds, largely depends on poverty-relief programs and subsidies, but large sectors of the population remain vulnerable despite the government’s best efforts. “There’s a lot of talk about the need to give much more attention to development of the domestic market. Several measures have been applied but very few of them have worked,” he said. There is also plenty of talk about the need for modernization. “But modernization means clear rules on competition and in the markets, as well as laws and measures that are both fair and seen to be fair,” says Bendesky. So what about growth? Under the present economic and political system – not to mention the corporatism of the trade unions – growth is more or less stagnant. “The wheels that move the growth machine are stuck,” says Bendesky.
13
Percentage increase in passengers carried by Mexican airlines in 2011 over 2010, despite the grounding of the two major airlines Mexicana and Aviacsa, according to the Transportation Secretariat.
18 million
Visitors in 2010 to Mexican archaeological sites, museums and historic monuments administered by the National Institute of Anthropology and History.
3.5 million
780 million
Expected amount in dollars that the Mexican baked goods maker Bimbo is expected to invest in the country in 2012. Its divisions include Gabi, Marinela, Lonchibon and the recently acquired Sara Lee.
7.8 billion
159.21
Average weight in pounds of Mexican males age 26-39 who live in the central part of the country (86.1 kilos).
189.42
Estimated cost in dollars of diabetesrelated treatment in Mexico in 2011, according to the National Public Health Institute, more than a 30 percent increase over earlier estimates.
Average weight in pounds of Mexican males age 26-39 who live in the northern part of the country (72.37).
3.71
Height of the average Mexican woman (1.58 meters).
2.58
Height of the average Mexican man (1.64 meters).
151.14
Approximate number of surveillance cameras operated by law enforcement authorities in Mexico City, according to the newspaper Reforma.
164.5
Number of persons who participate in the “informal economy” in Mexico City, according to the Labor Secretariat.
Price of a Big Mac in dollars in the United States at the end of 2012.
Price of a Big Mac in dollars in Mexico at the end of 2012.
Weight in pounds of the average Mexican woman (68.7 kilos), according to surveys conducted by the National Clothing Industry Chamber (Canaive).
Weight in pounds of the average Mexican man (74.8 kilos)
5’2”
5’4.56” 13,000
1.8 million
Number of those visitors who came from outside Mexico. March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 15
economy &finance
marketing
Selling Baseball in a Soccer Nation
The Mexican League approaches the 2012 season with plans to engage its loyal, but small, fan base text & photos By tom buckley
I
magine being the owner of a vegetarian restaurant in cowboy country. And most of the billboards are controlled by the cattle barons who dominate the region. Sure, you’d probably have a small, core clientele – the long-time vegetarians who have been devoted to your establishment for years – but it’d be hard to attract new customers without the exposure that billboards offer. That’s roughly the predicament the Mexican Baseball League faces as it manages a 16-team operation in soccer country. Organized baseball actually has a rich tradition dating back to the early 20th century shortly after U.S. Marines invaded Veracruz in 1914. The Mexican Baseball 16 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
League (LMB) was formed in 1925 and experienced a true Golden Age in the 1940s. Baseball was played here even earlier: Abner Doubleday was part of the invading U.S. forces who fought in northern Mexico in 1846; Col. Joseph Robertson, who once served under Gen. Robert E. Lee, introduced the game in Nuevo León when he granted his railroad workers a holiday on the fourth of July in 1889; Cuban emigrants in the Yucatán brought the game to the peninsula in 1890. But if baseball is the king of sports, soccer is an all-powerful emperor in Mexico. The two dominant television companies each own two soccer teams so it might come as little surprise that the LMB doesn’t enjoy national coverage on public TV.
Going Beyond TV Coverage
The LMB opened its 88th season on Friday, March 16, when the Mexico City Diablos Rojos visited the defending champion Quintana Roo Tigres. Along with the International League and the Pacific Coast League, it is one of three leagues playing at the triple-A level, one step below Major League Baseball. It is the only officially sanctioned tripleA league outside the United States. Nonetheless, LMB teams are not affiliated with specific Major League Baseball clubs as part of the farm system like the International and the Pacific Coast leagues. The relationship benefits the LMB because proceeds are shared and Mexican League officials get valuable feedback from the other leagues and from Major
League Baseball. It also facilitates direct exchanges, including exhibition games against Major League teams. On April 3, the Mexico City Diablos Rojos travel to Arlington, Texas, to play against the two-time AL pennant-winning Texas Rangers. “We are delighted with this arrangement,” said Rangers owner and president Nolan Ryan. “There are a lot of Hispanic Rangers fans in Dallas and we know they play quality baseball in Mexico. … The Diablos Rojos are a very competitive team with a long history of winning.” Other large exposure strategies are also being pursued. Two weeks before the opening pitch, the LMB was negotiating with ESPN2 to renew their contract. For over a decade, the sports programming network has broadcast two and three games a week for households in Latin America. “We are hopeful that a deal will be in place before the season begins,” said LMB marketing coordinator Alberto Guadarrama on March 1. But national TV exposure is not the primary focus of the league’s marketing efforts. Guadarrama told Mexico Review that most of the teams have local TV and radio agreements that provide more than adequate coverage in their home markets. The Sky satellite network also “did good work last year,” he said. Guadarrama dismissed the oft-cited allegations that the television networks’ soccer interests prompt them to deny TV coverage to the LMB. “It’s understandable from a programming point of view,” he said. “The nature of baseball means you simply don’t know when a game might end and that makes it a difficult sell [for the networks].” Instead, the LMB has emphasized efficient use of social media and strengthening fan experience at the ballpark. From Metro to Social Media
Baseball has an avid fan base in Mexico, but it is aging. “We do need to do more to generate interest among the young,” says Guadarrama in explaining the league’s approach to social media. The league provides all 16 teams with a basic outline of social media strategies with an eye on promotion and fan contact. The marketing staff has conducted
seminars to explain the value of social media in hopes of encouraging each team to maximize interest and curry fan support. The seminars include detailed guidelines, suggestions for engaging fans – especially responsiveness – and game promotions. For the first time ever, the LMB has advertisements in the Mexico City Metro. Handbills and banners have been placed in several interchange stations where more than one Metro line passes through and posters have been hung inside trains traveling on three separate Metro lines. The “Vive el Rey” campaign will be featured in the Metro through the end of March where an estimated 70 million commuters will have the chance to see the publicity. The best part of the campaign is that it cost the LMB absolutely nothing. Metro director Francisco Bojórquez is a big baseball fan and he acted as intermediary with the city government to approve the baseball advertising campaign. City authorities also contributed to the LMB kick-off event in the capital on March 8. The Federal District Sports Institute co-sponsored the philanthropic inauguration ceremony at the Monument to the Revolution. The merengue group Merenglass performed a concert during which it premiered its new song, written especially for the LMB, also called “Vive el Rey.” The LMB also presented reporters and attendees with details of its 2012 corporate social responsibility campaign entitled Ve Bien, Ve al Beis (“See well, watch baseball”) that aims to promote eye care with the goal of providing glasses for 16,000 youngsters this year. Promoting Good Causes
The LMB has enthusiastically embraced corporate social responsibility as a marketing strategy. Last year, the league and its teams focused extensively on breast cancer. “At the beginning of each series, the home team sponsored an awareness campaign,” Guadarrama said. “Team personnel, players, even umpires wore pink items with their uniforms; we used
pink balls and pink bases at certain times of the year too.” This year, the eye care campaign will get top billing although breast cancer awareness programs will still be emphasized. The LMB marketing staff is working with teams to develop local campaigns, auctions and side events in each of the 16 cities. One idea is to hold an auction in the stadium after a game in which fans in attendance can bid for a bat or some equipment used in that day’s game. Autographed balls will also be auctioned to fans. “We also want to have one weekend where each series will be labeled an ‘Everyone wears glasses’ promotion,” Guadarrama said. “All the players, vendors, even the umps will wear glasses in an effort to demonstrate that wearing glasses shouldn’t be seen as a stigma.” Despite these laudatory efforts, Guadarrama knows that the best way to grow the fan base is to help the fans embrace their team, to feel as though they know the players. “We encourage personal contact and we believe that fans will feel more involved and more connected if the teams and the players make an effort to be close to the fans,” he said.
life& leisure
destinations
Another Baja Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park has everything the peninsula is known for – isolation, inspiration, awesome beauty. But it’s nothing like the Baja most people think of. Text & Photos by David Brackney
Looking southeast toward Picacho del Diablo from the UNAM-run National Astronomical Observatory. On a good day, you can see the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific Ocean from here at the same time.
18 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 19
Santa Ana
destinations
•
Mexicali
One Devil of a Mountain
•
San Luis Río Colorado
•Ensenada
At 10,154 feet, Picacho del Diablo (Devil’s Peak) is hardly a giant by most mountaineering standards. It’s nearly 9,000 feet shorter than Mexico’s highest mountain, Pico de Orizaba, and more than 4,000 feet shorter than California’s high point Mount Whitney, which thousands routinely climb during the summer hiking season.
Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park
z te or fC ao Se map: ©2012 Google - INEGI
A
20 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
•San Diego •Tijuana
I JARN BAIFO L CA
f your image of Baja California is a desert land of bent-armed cacti, chaparral, and dusty back roads twisting to hideaway beaches, you’re not wrong. But on an 800 mile-long peninsula, you’d also expect a few surprises, and on that count Baja delivers in spades. One of the biggest surprises for many is Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park. This is a world of tall pines and cool mountain streams, where snowdrifts may linger till mid-spring and cattle graze in alpine meadows during the mild summer months. Baja’s highest mountain is located here, 10,154-foot Picacho del Diablo, which bears a striking resemblance to Mt. Whitney, tallest peak in neighboring California. It’s also home to some remarkably clear skies, unsullied by city lights or air pollution, which helps explain why the national university (UNAM) built three observatories here, including the world-renowned National Astronomical Observatory. In short, Sierra San Pedro Mártir offers everything you didn’t expect to find in Baja. But there it is, about 120 air miles south of the U.S. border – a 266 square-mile wilderness amid the rugged mountains that separate the temperate Pacific Coast from the sunscorched San Felipe Desert. And, it’s one of theleast-visitednationalparksinMexico,averaging only around 5,000 visitors per year. My first visit to the park came in 1999, a trip that nearly ended before it began. Driving a Chevy Corsica sedan, I took nearly three hours to cover the brutal 52-mile dirt road leading from Mexico Highway 1 to the park, picking my way past massive ruts, exposed bedrock and legions of sharp-edged rocks that cluttered much of the road. Along the way I stopped to lend a hand to a fellow traveler, who was struggling to change a tire on her Nissan Pathfinder, which had been hopelessly shredded on an especially bad patch of road. Needless to say, the low-slung Corsica was unsuited for such a trip. Yet somehow both car and driver survived intact and I went on to spend two busy days in the park, researching a new Baja guidebook for the Auto Club of Southern California. (The Club had graciously lent me the car with the unspoken understanding that I was to return it in one piece.) I had the time of my life those two days, exploring all I could by foot and by car (the roads in the park were easy-to-drive graded
n ea Oc ic cif Pa
I
life& leisure
•Los Angeles Beach •Long •
A quaking aspen at Vallecitos, elevation 8,000 feet, in Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park.
But don’t be fooled. Picacho del Diablo is no easy peak to bag. Baja California’s highest peak is no simple walk-up, but a rugged, remote summit that requires a certain amount of rock scrambling, even on the “easy” route. Most climbers take three days round-trip to scale the peak, widely regarded as a worthy feat for any serious mountaineer. Several approaches lead to the rocky summit, but the most popular route is from a trailhead known as Los Llanitos, located on the southwest slope, south of Vallecitos. Several websites offer in-depth information regarding Picacho and how to climb it. One of the best is a page written by veteran mountaineer Richard Carey at www.blueroadrunner.com/ picacho.htm. Picacho del Diablo
The piney high country of Parque Nacional San Pedro Mártir, looking north toward the National Astronomical Observatory. Two smaller observatories are visible at left (top). Completed in 1979, the National Astronomical Observatory enjoys some of the best star-gazing conditions on earth (bottom).
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 21
life& leisure
destinations Meling Ranch
dirt), camping beneath the stars and forming quick friendships with the handful of other campers who had made the long trek. Throughout my stay, I was reminded of the mountains in my native Southern California as they must have been 100 years earlier, before the onslaught of civilization arrived. I also vowed to someday return. Transformation
: If You Go Location: Sierra San Pedro Mártir National Park (English translation: Sierra St. Peter the Martyr) is located in the mountain range bearing the same name – one of nine named sierras traversing the central spine of the Baja California peninsula. The center of the park is about 100 air miles south of the U.S. border, although the driving distance is about twice that. Getting There: The primary access road here leaves Mexico Highway 1 about 155 miles south of Tijuana and eight miles south of the town of Colonet. From the turnoff, it is 52 miles to the park entrance and 56 miles to Vallecitos, located in the heart of the park. Plan on six hours’ travel time from Tijuana. If you’re coming from the interior of Mexico and don’t want to travel all the way around the Sea of Cortez and then south again down the peninsula, there is ferry service to La Paz, Baja California Sur, from Mazatlán (a 16-hour crossing) and Topolobampo (seven hours). The ferry web site is www.bajaferries.com. There is also ferry service from Guaymas, Sonora, to the town of Santa Rosalía, an 11-hour crossing. That ferry’s web site is www. ferrysantarosalia.com. Keep in mind that it’s 775 miles (1,247 kilometers) from La Paz to the park turnoff road, a twoday drive for sure. From Santa Rosalía, the driving distance is 240 miles to the turnoff road. Driving Conditions: A passenger car can safely negotiate the paved road that leads to Sierra San Pedro Mártir. However, a truck with high clearance and good tires will make for a better overall driving experience, and will award you the chance to explore more back roads. Four wheel drive is only necessary on the worst of roads in Baja. Admission: Entry fee is 40 pesos per person, about $3.
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I’ve been back twice since, including a recent visit with my two daughters, which revealed that very little has changed about the park, apart from one key thing: The access road is now paved from Highway 1 to the park entrance. Even so, the narrow twolaner demands careful, alert driving, with its many sharp curves, steep drop-offs and complete lack of shoulders as it climbs into the remote sierra. While making the long drive on that recent trek, I was struck once more by the abrupt transformation in vegetation that takes place somewhere around 6,500 feet, where the chaparral of the lower slopes suddenly yields to a verdant boreal forest of pines, cedars, quaking aspens and other highland flora. A few more miles and we reached the entry gate, where a friendly ranger was waiting to greet us, give us a handout and answer my assorted questions in Spanish regarding the park. There were only two other vehicles in sight this Friday afternoon, both of them well-worn passenger cars with Mexican license plates. I could see we were going to have the park largely to ourselves. Beyond the entry gate, a 10-minute drive through a grove of tall pines brought us to an expansive series of open meadows known as Vallecitos (Little Valleys). Although the park covers an area the size of Chicago, visitors typically spend most or all of their time in the vicinity of Vallecitos. Located at about 8,000 feet, it is the main jump-off point for the assorted footpaths that branch off into the surrounding mountain wilderness. It was early October, and the aspens along the meadows’ edge were at their peak fall color, a fiery yellow that set them off brilliantly from the neighboring evergreens. The air was crisp and tinted with the aroma of a fire from one of the nearby campsites. Except for the Spanish signage, this could have easily passed for a scene from the Rockies or High Sierra.
Isolation
The next day we set off on one of the nearby trails – one I had hiked on my first visit to the park a dozen years earlier. Before starting out we advised a ranger about our hiking plans and expected hour of return – a good idea anywhere but much more so up here, where days or even weeks might pass without another hiker treading the same path. Sure enough, we didn’t see another soul on our entire trek as we climbed our way into a forest of aspens while Vallecitos grew ever smaller below. It was a tranquility I rarely experienced in my years of hiking in California. In fact, it was almost eerie, the sense of isolation, even though we never got more than three miles from Vallecitos. That sense of spookiness disappeared, though, as soon as we reached the ridge top at a lookout point known as El Altar. It was a special moment, here at 9,500 feet sharing a view with my daughters I had first enjoyed more than a decade before. Far below spread the San Felipe Desert of northeastern Baja, the Sea of Cortez and on the eastern horizon, the state of Sonora in mainland Mexico, perhaps 75 miles distant. To our southeast, surprisingly close, was Picacho del Diablo (Devil’s Peak), its sheer eastern face looming high and mighty above the desert floor. Its saddleshaped summit was at most two or three miles away and just a few hundred feet higher than our own 9,500-foot vantage point. It might as well have been worlds away. In between lay the yawning, miledeep gorge known as Cañon del Diablo, which dramatically blocks easy access to the mountain and dissuades all but the most determined of climbers. Along the access road to Sierra San Pedro Mártir, somewhere east of Mexico Highway 1.
Splendor
It was not our first look at Picacho that day. In the morning we had paid a visit to the National Astronomical Observatory, perched atop Cerro de la Cúpula, a rounded, 9,286-foot summit located just north of Vallecitos. From the observatory we could see not just the Picacho and the desert, but a faint blue line to the far west that was the Pacific Ocean. Being here on a Saturday, we found the observatory was open to the public, with a team of UNAM astronomers on hand to give us a tour. With its 84-inch (2.1-meter) reflector, its telescope is only modest-sized
as major observatories go (the Hale Telescope at Palomar Mountain in California is 200 inches). But oh, those viewing conditions. To hear it from our resident guide, the skies here are among the best on earth for observing the heavens, rivaled only by Mauna Kea in Hawaii and Cerro Las Campanas in the Chilean Andes. Spend a night here and you’ll be hardpressed to disagree. The skies have been utterly clear on all three of my visits to the park, and there was no moon in sight during our recent stay, camping out at Vallecitos. Mere words can hardly describe the night-time splendor we stared
at overhead – countless pinpoint lights of the Milky Way spanned from one horizon to the other, crisscrossed by the occasional shooting star – an awesome spectacle for city-dwellers like us. This was quintessential Baja – a rugged, remote land where long, often challenging drives and extreme isolation dissuade all but the most dedicated travelers, where the determined few are rewarded with inspiring solitude, jaw-dropping scenery and memories destined to last a lifetime. In the case of Sierra San Pedro Mártir, it’s just a very different Baja than the one you knew existed.
Accommodations: There is no lodging at all within the park, but primitive campsites are available, most notably at Vallecitos. Pit toilets and makeshift fire rings are the extent of “facilities” within the park. You’ll need to bring your own food and drinking water with you. The closest lodging is at Meling Ranch, a rustic but comfortable inn located in the foothills just off the access road, about 30 miles east of Highway 1. Room rates start at $70 per night and camping costs $10 per person per night. Family-style meals are available at additional charge. For details, visit www. ranchomeling.com. Otherwise, clean but simple hotels can be found in Colonet and in San Quintín, about 20 miles south of the turnoff along Highway 1. They seldom fill up and rates are quite reasonable, starting at around $30 a night. Other Services: No services of any kind are available within the park. The closest gasoline, car repairs, markets or restaurants are in Colonet. Seasons: This is northern Baja, and the climate is much like that of the mountains in neighboring Southern California. At higher elevations, that means shirt-sleeve days and cool nights during the summer, and chilly days with subfreezing nights during the winter. Snowfalls, though seldom heavy, are possible between late October and mid-April. The Observatory: The National Astronomical Observatory is open to the public from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on most Saturdays between April and October. A locked gate blocks the access road the rest of the time, although you may still walk from the gate to the observatory, a distance of about 1.5 miles. UNAM maintains a Spanish-language web page dedicated to the observatory and two smaller observatories nearby. Go to www.astrossp.unam.mx. Learn More: The park’s official website, Spanish only, is www.sfa.gob.mx/sanpedromartir/visita. htm. A good source of information in English is Moon Travel Guides’ web page for the park, http://www.moon.com/ destinations/baja-cabo/ensenada-elrosario/sierra-de-san-pedro-martir/ parque-nacional-sierra-san-pedromartir.
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 23
life& leisure
nature
Rhapsody in Purple
Everything they say about the jacaranda is true. It’s a terrific tree. But Mexico City needs more trees. And it needs to take better care of the ones it has. by Kelly arthur garrett • PHOTOS: blanca robleda
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E veryone loves Mexico City’s famed jacaranda trees ... for a while. For six weeks, their blue-purple display re-asserts their century-old niche in urban lore and landscape. It reminds us of their role as an early harbinger of spring, as an inspiration for authors from Barbara Kingsolver to Elena Poniatowska, and as a handy lead for D.F. bloggers and travel hacks who can riff off “When the jacarandas are in bloom in Mexico City …” And then, for the rest of the year, though no less noble, they’re forgotten. The non-flowering jacaranda (which is what a jacaranda is most of the time) is no different than its fellow city-dwelling trees – a victim of neglect, poor care, abuse and the scorn of homeowners, whose DNA mandates a fierce suspicion of anything with roots. But for those six blooming weeks … ah! That’s when these trees are a godsend – literally so in the Joyce Kilmerian sense – to the habitually stressed chilango. When the jacarandas are in bloom in Mexico City, there is beauty nearby, color all around, and maybe a perceptible uptick in the municipal mood. Or maybe not. But the trees are magnificent. “The jacaranda is one of the few trees in the Valley of Mexico that are appreciated,” says Lorena Martínez, a biologist in charge of the botanical garden and urban green space education at Parque Xochitla in Tepotzotlán north of Mexico City, one of the few “parques ecológicos” in the metropolis that really is an ecological park. “People know its name, which is a major victory right there. Most trees have no individual identity in the public eye.” March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 25
life& leisure
nature
Mexico City’s pleasant Roma and Condesa neighborhoods literally grew up with the jacaranda, says biologist Lorena Martínez (inset). The trees, native to Brazil, were introduced to the capital in the early 20th century.
Generosity
The jacaranda’s rich foliage is impressive, thanks to leaves that are both pinnate and compound, meaning they are feathery and with doubled-up leaflet patterns. Its wood is attractive, useful for carpentry though not highly commercial, and it smells good. Its seed-bearing fruits are out-of-thisworld – hard, brown, castanet-shaped objects that suggest a lot of amateur arts and crafts projects. The tree’s shape is elegant, with trunks and branches much bolder than its flowery reputation would suggest. Jacarandas also give to the city all the benefits that most of its too-few trees offer: oxygenation; moisture retention; temperature control in the countless concrete-generated “thermal islands” that can raise the temperature as much as 5 degrees centigrade; energy-saving shade around homes that would otherwise use more air conditioning; noise buffering; a sense of comfort; and blessed stress relief, among much else. “It’s a very generous tree,” says Martínez. “And not just for the flowers.” But let’s face it, the flowers are the reason we pay attention to it. What makes the jacaranda bloom so vivid? 26 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
One reason, Martínez suggests, is timing. The jacarandas in Mexico City and the surrounding urban area bloom earlier than in, say, California. The flowers start appearing in the second half of February, flourish in March and continue into early April. They anticipate spring more than they actually usher it in. So tree-wise, they’re virtually the only show in town. The colorín (Erythrina americana), a Mexican native, is probably the only worthy competitor in Mexico City’s temperate climate; its bloom season starts a tad later, but overlaps with the jacaranda’s. The colorín’s tubed flowers are a striking bright scarlet and appear in clusters on a spike. In both trees, the flowers grow on an otherwise naked structure; the leaves come later in an energy-saving sequence. The difference between the two is that the colorín’s crimson clusters occur sparsely, while the jacaranda is overrun with color; 40 to 100 flowers occupying the ends of almost every branch. At the height of the blooming season – right about the time you’re likely to be reading this article – the Mexico City jacarandas look for all the world like trees in
full, rich purple foliage, though there are likely few leaves to be found on them. Tree flowers are usually colorful to attract pollinators. The jacaranda blooms are more noticeable than most others because of their abundance, but also because of their structure. They’re very small, very thin and very trumpet-shaped. The five lobes that make up each flower vary in size, but none are more than 5 centimeters long. If you look closely, you’ll see hints of white amid the blue. All of those characteristics add to the luminous effect. Those little flowers are lean, mean light-reflecting machines. Or as Martínez puts it more pleasingly, “They reflect the light with grace.” Immigration
The Mexico City jacaranda is not a Mexican tree, at least not originally. It’s native to Brazil, and small parts of Argentina and Uruguay. The species that settled in here is formally referred to as Jacaranda mimosifolia. The botanical name is not as complicated as the Latin suggests. The second word, which is the species name, simply means that the leaves are shaped like the mimosa (the tree, not the Sunday brunch
cocktail). Jacaranda, the genus name, is also the common name in Mexico and the United States, and is pronounced in Mexico much like in English, but with softer, European vowels and the “J” like an aspirated “H” but much raspier than in English. The generally accepted origin of the genus name is an indigenous Brazilian place name Latinized to “Jacarancy.” But in her book “Árboles y áreas verdes urbanas,” which describes most of the common trees, native and imported, in the greater Mexico City urban area, Mártinez gives us a more delightful possibility: “It’s also said that it comes from the word jácara, or its relative, which refers to an evening round [as in song] for happy people, from which the word ‘jacarandoso’ [lively] is derived, reflecting the size and showiness of the species.” (Botanists, it turns out, like to assign personalities to trees, unofficially of course. Willows are sad, ahuehuetes are holy, or just plain old, and jacarandas are vivacious.) Jacaranda mimosifolia entered Mexico at Veracruz at the dawn of the 20th century and was later introduced up in Mexico City, most notably in what are now known as Parque México and Parque España in the then-newly developing neighborhoods of Condesa and Roma. “Those two colonias literally grew up with the jacaranda, which was almost the only tree there at the beginning,” Martínez says. “The jacarandas carry with them the history of those neighborhoods.” Around the time the jacarandas arrived, the first modern movement to retree Mexico City was starting. Its leader was a public official named Miguel Ángel de Quevedo, whose name adorns a major thoroughfare in the Coyoacán neighborhood that runs near the botanical nursery garden (viveros) he established. Prescient and ambitious, Quevedo saw what urban trees could do to offset the future negative effects of the automobile, and the current dusty conditions marking a city built on a dried lake bed. He went to work planting native trees from what was left of the surrounding forests – pines, oaks, ahuehuetes, cedars. They all died. So he traveled abroad to search for trees that seemed to thrive in soil similar to what covered the capital. Thus began the predominance of imported trees in Mexico City, with acacias, eucalyptuses and others joining the jacaranda.
Quevedo’s efforts were admirable, but insufficient to overcome Mexico City’s population explosion of the second half of the 20th century. Today, Martínez says, the metropolis has less than a fifth of the green space recommended by the World Health Organization, and that includes soccer fields and other open spaces that don’t do much good from an environmental point of view. “There are much fewer trees in the Mexico City area than there were a few decades ago,” Martínez says. “We are doing very poorly.” We don’t have enough trees, and the ones we have are poorly cared for, by authorities and the public alike. “A lot of people think that trees grow best if you just leave them alone,” Martínez says. “For urban trees, that’s an Alice in Wonderland way of looking at it. They need attention.” That means, among other things, planting the right species in the right places, “raising” the young trees in a nursery first so they can be transplanted at a decent size, pruning them properly, and seeking a mix between long-lived trees such as pines, oaks and the revered Mexican native ahuehuetes (all of whose lifespans are measured in centuries), and the more visually pleasing short-lived species. The latter
category includes the jacaranda, which in urban conditions lives about half a century. But the major official intervention, besides hacking at public land trees in the name of pruning, seems to be the antiquated practice of spraying the lower with limestone powder mixed with the juice of nopal cactus leaves to garb the poor creatures in white calcetines, a play on words from the Spanish for lime (cal) and socks (calcetines). The motive is supposed to be blight prevention, but the one clear result is the visual cutting of the trees in half, an aesthetic insult. “It really doesn’t help much,” Martínez says of the spraying. “It’s mostly to give the idea that by spraying it on, you’re taking care of the trees.” Lorena Martínez and other promoters of the urban treescape have science on their side, but still face an uphill battle. Their cause is appreciated, but often dismissed in policymaking circles as dreamy and not entirely serious. Martínez is encouraged by growing movements to protect native plants and restore native ecologies, but she’s not a native-only advocate when it comes to urban trees. “That’s a myth,” she says. “We need a mix of the native and the exotic. If we only had native trees, we wouldn’t have the jacaranda.”
The jacarandas usually reach full bloom in March before most of their leaves are anywhere to be seen.
March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 27
life& leisure
A
science
Clipperton Island, also known as Passion Island, is a tiny low-lying coral atoll with only a few square miles of area. Most of its interior, viewed at left from a satellite photo, is made up of fresh water that turns highly sulfuric at deeper levels.
The Clipperton Project
Artists and scientists have set sail from Mexico for a remote atoll in the Pacific. Their mission: To change the way we think about our threatened environment. By kelly arthur garretT
The Scottish sculptor Charles Engebretsen (upper left) and Norwegian dancer-Choreographer Mia Habib (lower left) are two of the artists on the expedition, which will was scheduled to spend about a week on an island inhabited only by birds, rats and crabs.
28 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
bout a year and a half ago, Mia Habib, a Norwegian-born dancer and choreographer based in Tel Aviv, received an unexpected email. Coming from a sender whose name she didn’t recognize, the communication asked her to join an expedition to a tiny coral atoll that sits alone in the Pacific some 1,280 kilometers off the coast of Mexico. The island’s name is Clipperton. Surrounded by sharks, its only remaining inhabitants are boobies, poisonous crabs and a population of rats descended from shipwreck survivors. “I thought it was a joke,” Habib said at a gathering in Mexico City’s Anglo-Mexican Institute late last February, just days before she set sail along with about 20 others on that very expedition. “You don’t get emails like that every day.” Mia soon found out that the sender of the invitation was a British writer living in Mexico, although to call Jon Bonfiglio a writer is like calling Da Vinci an anatomist and leaving it at that. Bonfiglio is a novelist, essayist and children’s book author who has written plays in English and Spanish, and produced them and others in Europe and Mexico. He is, among many other things, a full-time member of England’s renowned clown troupe Le Navet Bete, a major force behind the formal cricket leagues and tournaments that have resulted in an internationally competitive national team (one of the best-kept secrets in Mexico), and an organizer of innovative multidisciplinary festivals and miscellaneous adventures, of which the current Clipperton Project may be the most ambitious. The atoll, no more than a sandy ring of about 3.5 square miles, has been the subject of some literature and much lore, from its discovery by the English pirate John Clipperton, through the ill-fated Mexican colonists there who were abandoned during the Revolution, to the attempts at industrial exploitation in the former of fishing, guano mining and military operations. It’s also been the object of a territorial dispute, with some in Mexico still resenting, on sovereignty grounds, the island’s designation as a French possession. Bonfiglio considers the issue of ownership of a scientifically significant, ecologically symbolic and ultimately doomed speck of sand in the middle of nowhere to be “stupid,” and refuses to talk much about it.
Instead, he organized an expedition to the island, with the support of a host of backers, notably the British Council and Greenpeace Mexico. (Perhaps in a nod to the latter, the project’s two sailboats and one motorized vessel stopped by Cabo Pulmo in Baja California Sur after departing from La Paz on March 1 to draw attention to that ecologically sensitive treasure, threatened by plans for a huge nearby development.) Not much of Clipperton is more than a few feet above sea level, and the atoll will probably be underwater in the not too distant future, a victim of global warming and the resulting rising sea. The appeal of studying anew the island’s current status is obvious, but the Clipperton Project involves more than the expedition itself and has aims that go beyond mere data gathering. The project is multinational; eight countries are represented. It is also multidisciplinary. Its particular conceit is that the artists and scientists on board get equal billing. The idea is that the artists (two painters, a sculptor, a choreographer, a digital artist, a photographer, three writers and a film crew) and the scientists (a biomedical scientist, a marine ecologist, a geographer and a social historian) are essentially engaged in the same pursuit – interpreting the universe. Boldly and counterintuitively, the project press literature insists that “when undertaken honestly, there is no distinction between art and science, or indeed between these and other human endeavors.” It’s a problem, according to this thinking, that art and science don’t speak to each other enough. “For the Clipperton Project,” the statement goes on, “it is imperative to move these practices into a new area of social usage.” More practically, the statement also says, “Art-science collaborations enable high-quality information to be conveyed to members of the public in an accessible and engaging manner.” That’s why Mia Habib got the email. Habib, who has performed her work in Mexico several times in recent years, was prepared to decline the invitation if the sole intent was to commission a dance work out of it. Artists can be skeptical about the intent of collaborative projects with non-art disciplines; they’re not eager to be the balloon twisters, providing the entertainment while scientists do the “real” work.
“Or there can be a pedagogical purpose to it, which I’m ambivalent about,” Habib said. “I see why it’s important, because scientific findings can’t always find their way out of their own circuit unless thy are communicated in other ways, like through exhibitions. But I don’t believe art should be a pedagogical tool for science.” The Clipperton Project will indeed hold exhibitions later in the year, as well as produce books, documentaries, podcasts and presentations to communicate their findings. But those things could happen without artists on board. There’s more to their presence. “Jon was more interested in bringing together a certain combination of people that would result in questioning things, in trying other ways of working outside the main path of each one’s own field,” Mia said. “And that was all I needed to say yes.” “Art will come out of this,” said Charles Engebretsen, a Scottish sculptor at the Glasgow Sculpture Studios, where a Clipperton Project exposition will take place in July. “But it’s not like I’m going to make a sculpture right there, carve something out of guano or anything like that. I’m more interested in the interdisciplinary work.” Engebretsen has clearly done his homework on the island’s ecology, and it was clear as he was preparing to set sail that the island holds a special fascination for him. “The water in the middle is not a lagoon; it’s fresh water, which seems unusual to me,” he said. “But its sulfuric acid as you go deeper. I just think that’s fascinating. It’s in the middle of nowhere and there’s this sulfuric acid pit. So anything that survives there is evolving in isolation.” Charles himself is an island boy, from a family in the Outer Hebrides. “That’s part of the reason I’m on this trip,” he said. “I have a background in the island life, diving, fishing, remote living. So I can transfer those skills to this project.” So if they’re not going to dance or sculpt on Clipperton, what are they going to do when they get there? “The first thing we’re going to do is figure out how to land,” Bonfiglio said, pointing out that the swells and the coral reefs pose a danger. “There will be a diving team offshore and landing teams. The artists will be involved in the science work. We have a specific itinerary, things we need to achieve and studies we need to complete.” March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 29
life& leisure
sports
Games to Watch
Week 11 Sunday March 18 UNAM at América There’s no love lost between these two Mexico City rivals and their games are always hotly contested in the stands as well as on the pitch. UNAM is trying to return to the playoffs after last season’s disappointing collapse, while América looks likely to contend for a top seed. Week 12 Friday, March 23 América at Morelia This could be the decisive match for the No. 1 seed in the playoffs the way these two clubs are playing. Sunday, March 25 Tigres at UNAM These two franchises have won the past two titles and Tigres coach Ricardo Ferretti was a long-time player and coach for the Pumas. Week 13 Saturday, March 31 Morelia at Tigres The Tigres’ staunch defense will be tested by the flowing system preached by Morelia coach Tomás Boy. Sunday April 1 Monterrey at América The Rayados have struggled to stay healthy the past two seasons, but they’ll likely need to beat América on the road to prove that they deserve consideration as a title challenger. Week 14 Saturday, April 7 Tigres at Monterrey The “Clásico Regiomontano” is always a hard-fought game between these two Monterreybased clubs. If Monterrey comes into this game after a win at Estadio Azteca, they could be hard to beat.
30 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
Week 15 Saturday, April 14 Guadalajara at Tigres The Chivas finally showed some signs of life after a terrible start to the season. Their race for the playoffs will be severely tested at Estadio Universitario.
At left, Morelia’s Miguel Sabah seems happy to be beating the Chivas. At right, Toluca’s scoring machine Iván Alonso points the way.
Cream of a Mediocre Crop The Mexican Soccer League has yet to produce consistently attractive football this season, but these figures deserve recognition. By Tom Buckley
T
he Mexican Soccer League passed the midpoint of its 17-game season on Sunday, March 5, with last season’s finalists – Tigres and Santos – sitting comfortably in the top four. Morelia is perched atop the standings with América soaring into second place on the back of a threegame winning streak, all shut-outs. No team has separated itself as a clearcut favorite – in fact, league-wide play is best characterized as unspectacular – which sets up a free-for-all in the stretch run with the top eight teams qualifying for the playoffs. Making predictions would be difficult since several teams will be without key contributors for up to three games (Weeks 12-14) as Mexico’s Under-23 team takes part in the Concacaf Olympics qualifier. The roster has not been announced yet, so it remains to be seen which teams might be hurt the most. In addition, six teams – Guadalajara, Cruz Azul, Santos, Morelia, Monterrey and UNAM – are also taking part in international tournaments. With this in mind, Mexico Review presents its midseason report card:
Best Team
After starting the season 1-2-1, Morelia has run off a five-game winning streak with a 12-3 goal differential. And the Monarcas’ victims were no patsies: Morelia handed Cruz Azul its first loss of the season in Week 8 and got a measure of revenge against Santos in Week 6 (Santos eliminated Morelia in last season’s semifinals). Coach Tomás Boy has the team playing an entertaining brand of “total football” and is pulling the strings majestically, despite directing a team that features no real stars.
Best Player
Last season’s goal-scoring champ Iván Alonso is at it again. Toluca acquired the Uruguayan striker from Spain’s Espanyol last summer for $9 million and he has not disappointed. In his first season in the Mexican League, Alonso found the net 11 times. The feat was even more amazing since foreigners often have trouble adjusting to the Mexican League. In addition, Toluca plays its home games at 2,663 meters (8,700 feet), a difficult task for even the
At left, new América coach Miguel Herrera exuded confidence before the season began. At right, Pachuca youngster Marco Bueno celebrates one of his goals.
best-conditioned athletes. Toluca is struggling again this season (in a three-way tie for 7th) but the lanky striker has scored nine goals in nine games despite being the focal point of opponents’ defensive strategy. Best Coach
Morelia’s Tomás Boy and Tijuana’s Antonio Mohamed make this a tough choice, but we’re going to give the nod to Miguel Herrera of América. The Águilas finished the Apertura 2011 season in 17th place leading to a complete housecleaning. Herrera has installed a more attacking style and the defense has been stellar. “El Piojo” – as Herrera was nicknamed during his playing days – has been forced to mix-and-match due to injuries and he has successfully inserted youngsters from the club’s farm team while gradually working in the new faces acquired by ownership. Most Surprising Team
The afore-mentioned Antonio Mohamed has his modest Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles playing solid football, holding down 5th place in the standings with only one loss. Tijuana won promotion to the First Division last spring but started out the Apertura 2011 season 1-4-5, resulting in the sacking of Joaquín del Olmo. Mohamed was hired and brilliantly finished out the season without a loss, as the Xolos went 2-5-0 to climb out of the relegation zone. The Xolos continue to surprise despite losing Colombian international Dayro Moreno. The Xolos-América clash in Week 10 promises to be a real test but Tijuana has arguably played the toughest part of its schedule
already, suggesting the Xolos could make the playoffs. Most Disappointing Team
Despite riding a two-game winning streak, Guadalajara wins this category easily. Owner Jorge Vergara fired his coach Fernando Quirarte after three straight losses to open the season. “I gave him a Ferrari and he gave me back a VW,” he said. The Chivas did not win until Week 8 and had scored only four goals through seven games. The recent hiring of Johan Cruyff as a consultant garnered headlines but he is expected to focus on player development not game tactics.
Week 16 Saturday, April 21 Atlas at Guadalajara The “Clásico Tapatío” might not have playoff implications this season, but Atlas loves nothing better than chopping down their giant crosstown rivals. Week 17 Friday, April 27 Querétaro at Estudiantes This eminently missable contest will likely determine which team gets demoted to Second Division. Sunday, April 29 Cruz Azul at América Besides the playoff seedings likely to be at stake, these two Mexico City rivals just don’t like each other. Cruz Azul recently ended an eightyear winless streak against América and has won the past three meetings.
Best Young Player
Two members of Mexico’s Under-17 world champions have been getting regular playing time, but have yet to win starting positions. Marco Bueno (Pachuca) gets the nod over Carlos Fierro (Guadalajara) because he has contributed more (three goals in six games) than Fierro. Bueno also scored the tying goal in Pachuca’s 4-3 win over Toluca as the Tuzos erased Toluca’s 3-0 lead. Most Likely to be Demoted
Estudiantes has played bad soccer for years but always did just enough to avoid relegation. Team owner José Antonio Leaño has fired coaches for not playing his son, Juan Carlos – an average defender, at best – and good coaches have resigned rather than put up with his meddling. This season, the Tecos are tied for last in the standings (with Querétaro) and seven points behind Atlas in the relegation standings. March 18, 2012 : mexicoreview 31
life& leisure
events www.mexico-review.com SPECIAL EDITION January, 2012 Mexico City Vol. 01 No. 01 32 pages
MARCH
Spring Attractions... The Papal Visit March 23-26 in León, Guanajuato, and Silao, Guanajuato
Pope Benedict XVI will be in Guanajuato, a state known for its religious conservatism, before moving on to Cuba. He is scheduled to arrive in the city of León on the 23rd, a Friday, where he will be received by President Calderón, and then will meet with him again on Saturday in the city of Guanajuato before appearing publicly. Sunday’s events will include a Mass in the new Bicentennial Park in Silao and Vespers in the cathedral in León, where he will address bishops and other representatives of the Bishops Conference of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Festival Vive Latino March 23-25 in Mexico City
may
april
The premier rock festival in Latin America will take place over three days and nights at the Foro Sol, a Mexico City stadium. The musical performers include Bunbury, Madness, Café Tacvba, Jaime López, Molotov and 100 others.
Feria de San Marcos April 14-May 6 in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes
A Year of Change, A Year of Renewal Presidential Politics An Early Look at a Historical Election
Remembering Leonora A Farewell to the Last of Mexico’s Surrealists
Magical Trips Nine Special Pueblos You’ll Want to Visit
PEOPLE : POLITICS : CULTURE : TRAVEL.
Totally Tri The National Soccer Team Has a World To Conquer
FROM MEXICO.
IN ENGLISH.
Vive Latino
Mexico Review is more than a magazine. It is a multimedia project that includes TV, radio, and internet.
The editorial focus of Mexico Review is general interest news exclusively about Mexico with special emphasis on politics, elections, art and culture. Our intention is to go beyond the headlines and explain the news, to put events in context and to offer our readers information about life in Mexico. With so much going on in Mexico, why not
Mexico City’s Monster Rock Music Festival
www.mexico-review.com A BI-WEEKLY January 27, 2012 Mexico City Vol. 01 No. 02 32 pages
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Just Say No
Why Can’t Congress Get Anything Done? IFE’s Groove Can the Election Referee Get It Back?
Anita’s Diary Hanging with Rivera, Orozco and the Rest
Soccer’s Start The Mexican League’s Clausura Gets Under Way
PEOPLE : POLITICS : CULTURE : TRAVEL
Plus: Pending Events, Revealing Numbers , Telling Quotes and More
FROM MEXICO.
IN ENGLISH.
Urban Roots
A Celebration of Mexico, Past and Present
www.mexico-review.com A BI-WEEKLY February 12, 2012 Mexico City Vol. 01 No. 03 32 pages
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If Mexico had a true national fair, this one in the San Marcos barrio of the city of Aguascalientes, in the state of the same name, would be it. Celebrants flock in from across the country, and from abroad. There will be a ton of cultural events and amusement rides, but the emphasis is also on the traditional - including bullfights, cockfights, charro-style equestrian events and, of course, food.
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Festival de México May 2-20 Mexico City
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Patti Smith is the top musical attraction in this year´s edition of Mexico City’s top cultural event. There will also be opera, theater, dance, literary presentations, children’s events and much more, with most attractions taking place in the heart of the Historic Center.
june
Mexico 2012:
Olympic Qualifying Soccer March 22-27 in Nashville, Tennessee, and Carson, California
The penultimate stage of the qualifying tournament that will determine which two teams from the Concacaf region will compete at the London Olympics will take place in Nashville, Tennessee, and Carson, California. The Mexican team will face Trinidad & Tobago on March 23, Honduras on March 25 and Panama on March 27. The U.S. plays against Cuba on March 22, Canada on March 24 and El Salvador on March 26. The top two teams from each of those groups will play in a semifinal round on March 31 in Kansas City. Those two winners get a ticket to London, but a final game to determine the tournament champion (and the seeding at the Olympics) will be played on April 2, also in Kansas City.
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G-20 Summit June 18-19 in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur
Heads of state and other top government figures from the 20 biggest economies – including Mexico, the United States and the European Union – will take over the Baja Peninsula resort area of Los Cabos for the annual G20 Summit meeting, with President Calderón wielding the gavel. A 653,400-square-foot, solar panel-equipped convention center is under construction to house the sessions, though there is doubt that it will be ready in time. Some 11,000 of the 13,000 available rooms in the area have been set aside for summit attendees.
Mexicans Abroad How They’re Changing European Soccer
Public and Private Nine Working Together to Build Mexico
PEOPLE : POLITICS : CULTURE : TRAVEL.
FROM MEXICO.
Pyramid Power Music in a Magical Place
IN ENGLISH.
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32 mexicoREVIEW : March 18, 2012
Women in Politics Moving Toward Gender Equality