MEXICO CITY BRIEFING February 2005

News this month

Save our mayor

Mexico City residents are scrambling to save their mayor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from standing trial over a controversial land deal. The populist, left-leaning mayor is alleged to have ignored a court order to stop building a road on expropriated land on the city's outskirts. Federal authorities are fighting to strip Mr López Obrador (known as “AMLO”) of his immunity from prosecution. Standing trial could impede his chances in Mexico's 2006 presidential election, a race he has been tipped to win.

The mayor’s Party of the Democratic Revolution has been working to mobilise support, sending text messages to mobile phones, flooding the city government's website with supportive banners and issuing lapel ribbons (which even a delegate from the rival National Action Party has sported). In the event, Mr López Obrador says that he is prepared to launch his presidential bid from jail.

Back together

Never one to let President Vicente Fox get the better of him, Mr López Obrador has reappointed Marcelo Ebrard, his right-hand man, after the president sacked him as city police chief. Back in the mayor’s cabinet, Mr Ebrard is now serving as minister for social development.
After a lynch mob killed two policemen on the outskirts of the city in 2004, Mr Fox seized the opportunity to undermine Mr López Obrador, a political rival, and sacked Mr Ebrard. But despite Mr Fox's best efforts to discredit him, the former police chief is the party favourite to take over the mayor’s job when Mr López Obrador begins his run for president.

Roll on, Metrobus

Mexico City's long-awaited “metrobus” may soon be a reality. The first terminal for the 18-metre super-buses is rising on the central island of Avenida Insurgentes, a thoroughfare notable for its congested lanes and exasperated traffic cops. The city’s transport authority has promised to have the bus running by the end of March, and may introduce 33 more “transport corridors” around the city later on.

The new bus will ply a 20km route along a dedicated lane on Avenida Insurgentes, from Indios Verdes to San Angel, carrying 250,000 passengers a day at speeds reaching 80kph. The state-of-the art buses have one of the cleanest engines available on the market. With 80 of these replacing 250 of the wheezing minibuses that belch up and down Insurgentes, experts predict a 50% reduction in pollution along the thoroughfare.

A nicotine-coloured haze

It will take far more than metrobuses to curb Mexico City's toxic emissions problem, which it now appears to be exporting. A new year-long study will measure how far the capital's pollution migrates beyond the Valley of Mexico into other states and even continents.

Every morning, about 3.5m cars carry some of the metropolitan area’s 20m people to work. During the cooler early hours of the day, the toxic gases released are trapped by the cold-air cap and the surrounding mountains. But later in the day, prevailing winds move the pollution up into the atmosphere to heights of 5,000m above sea level, where they are high enough to travel freely. America's National Centre for Atmospheric Research has lent Mexico two Hercules C-130 aeroplanes equipped for scientific missions. These will monitor how much of the city's tea-coloured haze is escaping, and where it is going. This is one Mexican export nobody wants.

Something to carp about

The punters who drift along the tranquil canals of Xochimilco on Sundays with a picnic and a bucket of cold beer are blissfully unaware of the battle that rages in the waters beneath their toes. The canals are infested with a plague of killer carp, which are devouring the water's native inhabitants and even eating the canal banks.

Introduced to the canals 40 years ago as a potential new source of food, the carp have seized power and dominate pond life. The Mexican salamander (or “walking fish”), a rare native breed, is particularly threatened, as the carp munches away the roots of plants beneath the water line, the salamander's preferred spawning ground. The carp may not even be safe to eat these days—experts suspect they may be contaminated with heavy metals. All this has brought a second plague down on local dwellers, this time of university academics and science experts, brandishing a $180,000 grant from the Xochimilco borough authorities. They have five months to come up with a solution to save the salamanders from the carp. Watch this space.

Catch if you can

March 2005

Picasso's Illustrated Books, 1944-1969

Until February 28th 2005

Endless praise for Picasso's paintings often sidelines his spectacular talents as a draughtsman. This show gives us 92 of his prints and drawings, many of them rarely seen in public. They come from eight different books that he illustrated for some of his writer friends, including Ramón Reventós, Robert Desnos and Rafael Alberti.

The works here are on loan from Spain's Bancaja Bank collection, which has one of the most complete selections of Picasso’s graphic works. While in Chapultepec Castle, you can also visit the recently restored private rooms of the Emperor Maximilian, a French ruler of Mexico for a brief stretch in the mid-19th century.

Museo Nacional de Historia, Castillo de Chapultepec, first section of the Bosque de Chapultepec, San Miguel Chapultepec. Open: Tue-Sun,10am to 6pm. Tel: +52 (55) 5241 3100.