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

News this month

Money trail

It seems that a growing share of Mexicans emigrating to America come from Mexico City. In February the Bank of Mexico announced that the number of remittances to the capital from America had increased by a factor of seven in the past ten years. With so many immigrants crossing the border illegally, tracking remittances is one of the best ways to determine where they lived before heading north.

Mexico City’s economic growth has lagged behind that of the country as a whole, which could explain why emigration to America has increased. In 2005 the city received the second-most remittances in the country after Michoacán, a central-western state. (The capital received a whopping $479m in only three months of 2005.) The Bank’s announcement of the rise in remittances is the clearest sign yet that emigration patterns have changed dramatically in the past decade—no longer do most America-bound Mexicans come from a few regions in the country’s north.

Water logged

Mexico City is preparing for the fourth annual World Water Forum, held from March 16th-22nd. One of the largest conferences ever hosted by the city, the forum will discuss a range of water issues, from irrigation to sanitation. City authorities are expecting mass demonstrations, as the meeting will attract throngs of protestors and nearly 10,000 delegates.

This event comes just as the city contends with a string of bad environmental news. Local authorities announced that wells have gone dry, making 26% of the city’s water supply unavailable. Furthermore, deforestation may be depleting reserves for the future. Greenpeace Mexico, an environmental group, said that Mexico City’s drainage basin is losing 2,400 hectares of tree coverage annually. According to city officials, the capital has lost 40,000 trees to the construction industry since 2001, roughly the number of trees in the city’s central Chapultepec park. The effect of this deforestation may become clearer after a group of scientists, supported by the Mexican government and America's National Science Foundation, completes a month-long environmental study of Mexico City air at the end of March. An American transport plane fitted with sensors has been flying around the city all month to gather data.

A gross injustice

A scathing new report has called attention to women’s rights abuses in Mexico. On March 7th Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group, released a report stating that access to abortions for rape victims was being systematically blocked by Mexican authorities. Abortion in general is illegal in Mexico, but is sanctioned in cases of rape. Nonetheless, the report argues that rape victims still have trouble getting an abortion. The barriers are prohibitively high: a rape must be reported to prosecutors before an abortion can be approved, and women are often shuttled back and forth between prosecutors and public-health authorities to confirm the circumstances of the pregnancy. Moreover, many officials try to dissuade rape victims from getting an abortion, telling them that they will probably die during the operation. And in Mexico City, women are photographed before and after the abortion—a process, the report claimed, meant more to humiliate than to serve any real purpose.

As a result, women often either resort to dangerous back-alley abortions or carry their pregnancy to term, even when the pregnancy was from a rape by a family member. According to the Mexican government, 120,000 women and girls are raped each year. Human Rights Watch puts the number closer to 1m.

A path to the future

A plan to build a 43km bicycle path across Mexico City is moving forward. The brainchild of some of Mexico’s most prominent architects, the path would go from Chapultepec Park (Mexico City’s version of New York’s Central Park) to the forest of San Juan de Aragón, north-east of the city.

Given that Mexico City’s drivers are among the worst in the world—they often treat traffic lights as mere suggestions—a path of such magnitude could do a great deal to increase cycle traffic, and so decrease pollution. Critics quip that any environmental benefit would be offset by the number of trees that would have to be cleared for the path. The plan has yet to be approved by the city council or the mayor.

Catch if you can

March 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 (5 metres x 10 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