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

News this month

Switch hitter

With July's mayoral election fast approaching, the National Action Party (PAN) announced Demetrio Sodi as its nominee on January 30th. Mr Sodi may seem an unlikely candidate for the centre-right party, as he is a former senator for PAN’s rival, the centre-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). He made the switch and won the PAN's primary only after it became clear that he could not secure the PRD’s nomination.

Mr Sodi trails the PRD’s candidate, Marcelo Ebrard, by a wide margin. Still, he may be able to close the gap, as he is already seen as more progressive and open than his opponent. Mr Sodi quickly won the favour of editorial writers in La Jornada, a left-leaning newspaper, as well as the support of prominent PRD members dissatisfied with their party’s choice. His victory—though a long shot—would be a coup for the PAN: the PRD has held Mexico City’s mayoralty, considered the second most important office in the country, since the position became an elected seat in 1997.

American hospitality

The Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel was the centre of a diplomatic scuffle in February. It was the site of a three-day summit on “US-Cuba Energy”, which saw Cuban officials eagerly wooing American oil executives from Texas and Louisiana, in an effort to get American firms to extract Cuban oil resources. But the seduction was foiled in many ways on February 3rd, the second day of the summit, when the Sheraton kicked out the Cuban delegation under pressure from the American treasury. Because Sheraton is owned by an American firm, hosting the officials violated America’s 45-year-old trade embargo with Cuba.

The conference was promptly moved to a non-American hotel, but the affair has roiled anger in Cuba and Mexico alike. The Cuban government filed a complaint with the Mexican government; Luis Derbez, Mexico’s foreign minister, condemned the application of American laws in Mexico; and Mexico City officials are considering closing the Sheraton. Tension between Mexico and America has been running high already, owing to the matter of illegal immigration. America's Congress is considering building a fence along parts of the border, and some politicians claim that the Mexican army is infringing on American territory.

Serial captures

January was a good month for the city’s crime-fighters. A two-year saga may have come to an end on the 25th, when police arrested Juana Barraza, a 48-year-old former professional wrestler. They declared that she was the “little-old-lady killer”, or mataviejitas, accused of murdering 30 elderly women in their homes. Ms Barraza was captured fleeing a house where an 82-year-old woman, Ana Maria Reyes, was found strangled with a stethoscope. She admitted that she had killed Ms Reyes and three other women, but denied to reporters that she was guilty of the rest. Police detectives, however, said that Ms Barraza’s fingerprints place her at the scene of at least ten other murders.

The city’s mayor, Alejandro Encinas, had made capturing this serial killer his top crime-fighting priority. In other good news, police also announced that they had captured Raul Osiel Marroquin, an alleged serial killer, who confessed to the press that he had killed at least four homosexual men, apparently after picking them up at bars.

Ready, set, jump

An Austrian daredevil parachuted off Mexico City’s tallest building, the Torre Mayor, on January 30th. After his feat, 36-year-old Felix Baumgartner paused briefly to speak with onlookers and the press at the foot of the 225-metre (738-foot) building, before speeding away in a Hummer to avoid authorities—in typical fashion, he had not obtained a permit for the jump. The city government has been split over whether to punish the building’s management for allowing Mr Baumgartner to evade security measures. Mayor Encinas wants to fine the management firm 7,000 pesos ($670), while district officials wish to let matters lie.

Though it towers over the city, the Torre Mayor was only a medium-sized jump for Mr Baumgartner. He has parachuted off the world’s tallest building, the 450-metre Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, and holds the cheeky world record for the shortest parachute jump, a mere 29 metres, from the top of a statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro.

Raging bull

In the annual festival of San Fermin in Pamplona, Spain, the city unleashes six bulls onto its streets and the foolhardy run for their lives. This spectacle was unintentionally reproduced in Mexico City on January 30th, when a 503kg (1,108-pound) bull named Pajarito (Titmouse) cleared two fences and jumped into the stands during a bullfight. The stands were full, but miraculously no one was killed; seven people were injured—at least one seriously—before a bullfighter followed Pajarito into the stands and killed him.

Built 60 years ago, the city's bullring is one of the world's biggest, holding 48,000 spectators. Mayor Encinas is in talks with local officials to figure out the best way to make the stadium more secure. The bull had little problem clearing the metal bars that are meant to keep the animals in the ring.

Catch if you can

February 2006

Phil Kelly

Until March 4th 2006

This small exhibit proves that a bold dash of paint can sometimes convey more than a thousand tiny strokes. Phil Kelly, an Irishman who lives in Mexico, creates paintings that are testaments to the power of suggestion. Aggressive strokes and vivid colour bring vistas to life, giving a kinetic energy to otherwise clichéd landscapes such as Paris’s Seine and Mexico’s beaches.

Perhaps the best of these, “Mar Can-Cún”, features a pair of furled beach umbrellas that look more like plaintive sentries than workaday blights on the sand. The exhibit also includes a series of yellow-tinted portraits, which recall Matisse. One work, “The Historic Centre denuded after the rain”, unites the portraits and landscapes, as it combines the undulation of a woman’s legs with a stretch of Mexico City’s old downtown.

Alliance Française Polanco Sócrates #156 Col. Polanco. Open: Mon-Fri, 9am-8pm; Sat 9am-1.30pm. Tel: +52 (55) 1084-4190. See the exhibit’s website.

More from the Mexico City cultural calendar