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

News this month

Taking the high road

The construction of the segundos pisos—an elevated highway above Mexico City's ring road that was perhaps the most controversial project of Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s mayoral tenure—is nearing completion. Large sections have been opened over the last few weeks, easing travel between the city’s centre and the south. However, even the brand-new roads show the haphazard nature of the project. In one section, two lanes became three narrow ones because of a clumsy repainting of the lines—the old lane markings are still visible.

The roadway can be seen as a symbol of Mr López Obrador’s ambition. His supporters say it is a visionary project, while his opponents say it is wasteful and poorly planned. It remains to be seen whether the road will affect the presidential elections of July 2nd, for which polls put the former mayor just behind Felipe Calderón, the candidate of President Vicente Fox's conservative National Action Party. Mr López Obrador is already very popular in the Mexico City metro area, so it probably won't make a huge impact: the electorate has already accepted the new road as a project with mixed results.

A good example

Joel Ortega, the city’s secretary of public security, has announced that robberies in the ritzy Polanco district were down 85% in the first four months of 2006, compared with the same period of 2005. He credited the drop to “Operation Polanco”, which gives the police a more assertive street presence. Since the operation started in 2003, the number of robberies reported per week has dropped from 35 to 1.5. Mr Ortega announced plans to roll out similar programmes in other neighbourhoods. Whether the success will be repeated in less well-heeled areas—the most common robberies in Polanco were of mobile phones, MP3 players and watches—remains to be seen.

Improving access

The government of Mexico City has signed an agreement with both local and federal transparency institutes to implement a system allowing citizens to make freedom-of-information requests online. The independent Institutes of Access to Public Information were set up by the president, Mr Fox, for citizens who want information from government bodies—such as how much a building cost, what government studies say about an issue, etc. Óscar Guerra, the president of Mexico City's transparency institute, said that he hoped to sign similar agreements with local legislative and judicial powers, which would give people access to different sets of information.

The agreement, which should take place by the end of the year, comes too late to affect this year’s presidential elections. It does, however, move Mexico City ahead of America, where such requests still need to be made by letter.

Smoking ban

At the end of May the Mexico City government's secretaries of health and public education announced a new initiative to curb smoking in the city’s high schools. The thrust is to ban smoking throughout the schools—until now, most have had designated smoking areas. But because a simple ban would probably be ignored, it is accompanied by initiatives that teach the dangers of smoking and the importance of enforcing the ban for the sake of the rule of law.
A recent study reported that 20% of students smoke regularly, and half admit to having smoked. Smoking in Mexico has been dropping in popularity, as cigarette taxes have risen substantially over the last five years. The plan should be fully implemented by the year’s end.

Clean-up operation

The Angel of Independence, Mexico City’s iconic equivalent of the Arc de Triomphe, will be out of commission during both the World Cup and the presidential elections. The 24-carat-gold plated statue, which sits atop a 36-metre pillar in a traffic circle on Reforma, one of the city’s main thoroughfares, is the traditional focal point for celebratory gatherings on election night; hundreds of thousands gathered after Vicente Fox’s victory in 2000. But it will be sheathed in scaffolding until October as part of a 40m peso ($3.5m) renovation effort. The project will clean the statue and add a new finish to shield it from environmental damage.

Catch if you can

June 2006

Xul Solar: Visions and Revelations

Until July 30th 2006

Beware an artist who was friends with Jorge Luis Borges. Xul Solar, the painting name of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari, tried to paint—or realise in some way—the sorts of fanciful things that Borges, a fellow Argentine, wrote about. This show pulls together a range of work from 1910, when he began painting, to the early 1960s. His earlier work shows a kind of naivety, but its sophistication stops the descent to cliché. A watercolour of a faceless woman in a cave perfectly captures the form of loneliness. Solar became more playful as he aged: the brightly coloured paintings are a sort of incipient “Fantasia”. Like the Disney film, there is menace beneath the mêlée, but it makes you grin nonetheless.

Museo Tamayo, Reforma and Gandhi, Polanco. Tel: +52 (0)55 286 6519. Open: Tue-Sun, 10am-6pm. See the museum’s website.

More from the Mexico City cultural calendar