Economist.com Cities Guide: Mexico City Briefing - January 2006

News this month

At least something is making money

Despite Mexico's sluggish economic growth—the finance ministry recently estimated GDP growth in 2005 at 3%—the Bolsa, Mexico City's stock exchange, posted record gains over the year. On December 14th, it broke 18,000 points for the first time in its history. Though the Bolsa had fallen slightly by the end of the December, its year-long performance was far from shabby: the Bolsa rose 37% (in peso terms—45% in US dollars) over the course of 2005, and set new daily records 40 times in the process.

But this good news for investors does not change the country's general economic outlook, which remains grim. Mexico has a small stock exchange compared with other countries with economies of the same scale: fewer than 150 companies are traded, and volumes are small.

Cold snap

A sustained cold front—below freezing in some parts of the city—in early January has been bad news for many of Mexico City's poor. More than 1,000 people took refuge in shelters, and respiratory illnesses (mainly the flu) were up by 15-20% on the weeks before the cold spell, according to the city government. The return of Mexico City's 840,000-odd students to school in January, after a two-month holiday, exacerbated the flu's spread; it hardly takes long for an ill child to pass on a virus in a classroom. The worst-hit part of town was Cuajimalpa, which lies 3,100m above sea level. Residents there gathered around makeshift campfires as temperatures sank to 4º Celsius below zero (25º Fahrenheit).

The other campaign

Mexico’s mainstream politicos are campaigning furiously ahead of July’s presidential election, but Sub-Comandante Marcos—or “Delegate Zero”, as he now prefers to be called—is determined not to be lost in the fray. Back when he was Sub-Comandante, Mr Marcos led the Zapatistas in one of the world's shortest revolutions, which lasted less than a fortnight in 1994 before reaching an uneasy truce with Mexico's government. Now Mr Marcos and his fellow Zapatistas have launched “The Other Campaign”, a six-month tour that will run through all of Mexico’s 31 states, plus the capital. The inaugural rally on New Years Day in the southern state of Chiapas reportedly lured 15,000 people.

It is not clear what Mr Marcos hopes to accomplish, though on Christmas Day he proclaimed that his tour would “construct a national programme of anti-capitalist struggle and of the left”. Mr Marcos has faded from the spotlight in recent years, so some have quipped that the campaign’s main goal is to put him back on the national stage. Many Mexicans are content to ignore the campaign, but not Vicente Fox, Mexico's president—he launched his own one-week tour of indigenous villages in response. Meanwhile, the Zapatista's left-wing allies in Mexico City, including several small communist parties, have been busy organising for Mr Marcos's visit.

Porn to run

Federal and city police have launched a series of massive crackdowns on street vendors of pirated pornography. More than 1,000 police officers swept streets and subway stations for such contraband several times in December, and at least once so far in January. Joel Ortega, head of public security for Mexico City, announced in a December 30th press conference that authorities had identified three major rings of pornography distributors; security reasons, he said, prevented him from giving more details. Some doubt whether officials actually know more than they have disclosed: the street sweeps were haphazard and few arrests were made, as vendors threw whatever they could find at the police and ran away.

Degrees for sale

Daniel Cabeza de Vaca, Mexico's attorney general, announced that prosecutors are investigating public officials at Mexico City's National Autonomous University (UNAM), the world's largest, for selling degrees. Cronica del Hoy, a local newspaper, had reported that a degree-selling network existed on the internet as long ago as 2004, but prosecutors have yet to charge anyone. Mr Cabeza de Vaca promised that indictments would be handed down soon.

The attorney general’s remarks came just as the UNAM was complimenting itself on renewing its accreditation from the International Organisation for Standardisation, a Geneva-based body which sets international standards for everything from digital movies to freight containers.

Catch if you can

January 2006

Jesús Rafael Soto: Vision and movement

Until April 23rd 2006

Rarely does a museum exhibit ensnare you. But that is the effect of this retrospective of art by Jesús Rafael Soto, a Venezuelan artist who died in 2005. Perhaps the most powerful work is “Penetrable Blue”, an enormous lattice of blue acrylic strings (5x10 metres), which visitors are encouraged to enter. The perfect spacing of the strings makes everything seem to dissolve into shimmer, and it is nearly impossible to leave. This is modern art at its best, conveying something that has not been felt before. Less visceral but more ethereal is “Concorde Sphere”, which, like many of Soto's works, encourages you to walk quickly through the room. The work's components cause a diffraction that is enhanced by motion.

Museo Tamayo, Reforma and Gandhi, Polanco. Tel: +52 (55) 5286-6519. Open: Tue-Sun 10am-6pm. Admission: 15 pesos (free Sun). See the museum's website.

More from the Mexico City cultural calendar