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Border wall is a reality in Eagle Pass
I’m traveling along the border this week and last week came across my first piece of border wall. Being in Mexico City most of the time, I hear about cost overruns and delays, but at least in the city of Eagle Pass, the wall is becoming a reality. It looks to be actually two levels of wall (more like a tall, metal fence) separated by a road that I imagine U.S. Border Patrol will be riding on. The fence isn’t finished and we could get as close as we wanted: it was sunk several feet below the ground, with wire mesh, in hopes of deterring tunnelers.
In Eagle Pass, which put up one of the biggest fights against the wall, the border fence appears set to slice across the city’s edge, going around a golf course that sits on the banks of the Rio Grande as well as some playing fields. Locals believe Homeland Security will be building doors into the border wall to allow access to these places.
Homeland Security is rushing to finish the job before the current administration ends and a spokesman told me today that officials believe 90 to 95 percent of the 670-barrier will be built or under construction by the end of the year.
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Ode to carnitas
Mexican food is uniformly delicious, but nothing makes me misty-eyed like a good plate of carnitas. Carnitas are pork, but there is no equivalent north of the border. More succulent than a Christmas ham, more flavorful than pork chops, more subtly aromatic than bacon, carnitas are unlike anything else I’ve ever tried.
Like many delicious Mexican specialties (paletas! Cotija cheese!), carnitas are native to the state of Michoacan, but can be found throughout the republic. Mexico City, particularly, is home to some great carnitas joints. The Mercado in the Del Valle neighborhood is known for great carnitas, as is the sprawling El Arroyo mega-restaurant in southern Mexico City. But for my money, the best carnitas are found at a taco stand outside the Zapata subway stop. Maybe it’s because they are stewing in flavorful grease, but they are always moist and flavorful.
Maciza is the name for straight up pork meat, and is the most visitor-friendly cut of carnitas. Some people mix a little cuerito into their maciza, adding some luscious, buttery, unfried pork skin to the drier maciza. Many carnitas fans go for the more exotic cuts like buche (stomach) and trompa (snout).
Carnitas are sold in Austin, but since I didn’t become a carnitas junkie until we moved to Mexico City, I’m not sure where the best ones are. Does anyone know where they sell some good carnitas in the capital city?
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The PRI rises again
Like a lot of correspondents here in Mexico, I had planned to do a story about the death of the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for 71 years of the so-called “perfect dictatorship.” It was on my story list moments after the 2006 presidential election, when PRI candidate Roberto Madrazo finished an embarrassing third place, behind the right-leaning PAN and left-leaning PRD parties. Since losing its grip on the presidency in 2000 with the historic election of Vicente Fox, the PRI had fallen dramatically out of favor. By 2006 it was the third party in Congress and only the choice of one in five Mexicans during the presidential election.
Not only was the PRI losing elections, but it was losing its moorings. Debates raged within the party over whether it was a left- or right-wing party. It had no ideology, it seemed, except to accumulate power. Once out of power it would only whither, and a lot of folks figured, eventually die. It was a relic of Mexico’s uncomfortable past, the party of crooked unions and authoritarian backroom power brokers. Mexico was entering a new, more democratic, post-PRI era.
I never got around to writing that story, and in retrospect, that was a lucky thing. For just two years later, the PRI has engineered a dramatic comeback. It is once again the country’s dominant political force. It has steamrolled the last several state elections and is expected to win a majority of seats in the Mexican Congress in the 2009 midterm elections. And the PRI governor of the State of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto, is the early frontrunner for the next presidential election in 2012.
Second, the PRI has masterfully used its position as the swing vote in Congress to its benefit. The PRI was considered by many to be the true winner in the recent oil reform measure, with the final version looking very close to what the PRI was proposing (and much different than what the PAN and President Felipe Calderon were hoping for).
Unlike under Fox, when the PRI set itself up as an obstructionist opposition in Congress, grounding nearly of Fox’s initiatives so as to deprive him of political glory, the PRI under Calderon has taken a different tack: effectively using its position as swing vote to mold legislation, win favors from the other parties and position itself in the public eye as a party that can get things done.
We’ll see in 2012 if the PRI can complete its miraculous recovery.
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Japanese man lives in Mexico City airport
We were walking through the Mexico City airport today and who should we stumble across, but the most famous man in Mexico City right now: Hiroshi Nohara has made international headlines after making the airport’s Terminal 1 his new home. Nohara spends his days and nights wrapped in a blanket, sitting near the McDonald’s in the airport food court. He’s been there since Sept. 2. Just why he has decided to live in the food court remains a mystery. He tells local media he’s not sure what he’s doing there. He reportedly lives from donations from local fast food joints (hamburgers are his favorite). The AP describes him as “foul-smelling.” His first weeks were spent more as a curiousity, but since he was discovered by the press he’s become a bona fide celebrity. He denies that he was inspired by the Tom Hanks movie “The Terminal.”
When we came across him today, he was nursing an orange juice and brownie and posing for pictures with tourists. A professional photographer was taking his picture. Lots of people passed and saluted. He took it all in with a big smile and didn’t seem perturbed by the attention. When people left his table, he seemed to slip into a semi-conscious state, with closed eyes.
Neither is it clear when Nohara plans to get on a plane and leave the airport. If he’s going to stay though, I have a little bit of advice: take the tram to the newly constructed Terminal 2. It’s a lot nicer over there.
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Love motels feeling the pinch
According to this morning’s El Universal, the global economic crisis is hitting one Mexico City industry particularly hard: the city’s 3,500 pay-by-the-hour “love” motels. Apparently, the squeeze on wallets is causing Mexicans to spend a little less when it comes to adult diversion. One motel employee told reporter Sara Pantoja that “their libido is going down because they’re so worried about their money.”
Love hotels are ubiquitous in Mexico City. There’s probably a good sociology study in there somewhere, but suffice to say that some of the city’s biggest thoroughfares are lined with blocks of the hotels. Some have taken to offering free car washes while clients are otherwise engaged in hopes of drumming up business.
An UNAM professor told El Universal that during economic depressions sexual appetite actually tends to increase as people look for relief from their money woes. As such, he expects an increase in the number of cars with tinted windows parked on dark streets.
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Mexican scientist tapped for Obama’s team
Molina is likely Mexico’s most respected scientist - he is certainly the most quoted by the Mexican press. He has been a tireless advocate for alternative energy sources in Mexico and is one the great champions for reversing Mexico City’s notorious pollution.
Molina has also worked to find ways for developing nations to grow their economies without doing the kind of environmental damage wrought by the developed world.
Molina’s selection is already sparking pride here. The Ciudadania Express blog’s headline is that Molina is the “first Mexican on Barack Obama’s team.”
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Newspaper attacked with grenades
Violence against reporters and newspapers in Mexico is spiking yet again, highlighted by Sunday’s grenade attack on El Debate, a newspaper in the drug war-ravaged city of Culiacan, Sinaloa. No one was injured in the midnight attack, unlike previous cartel aggressions, including the 2006 machine gun and grenade attack on Nuevo Laredo’s El Manana, which left one reporter paralyzed.
Last week, Armando Rodriguez, a crime reporter for El Diario in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, was shot and killed in front of his home as he waited to take his daughter to school. According to some media accounts, more than 1,300 people have been killed this year in Juarez, home to a brutal war between cartels and currently the most violent city in Mexico.
In September, radio host Alejandro Fonseca was killed in the southern state of Tabasco as he hung political banners denouncing a rash of kidnappings in his state. Two radio reporters were killed in Oaxaca in April.
In 2006, grenades were tossed at several newspapers on the Yucatan Peninsula.
Reporters here continue to clamor for protection. Despite the creation of a special prosecutor for crimes against journalists, the violence continues. Some newspapers, in the face of the Mexican state’s inability to keep reporters from getting murdered, have understandably resorted to self-censorship when it comes to the drug wars. Others report at their own peril.
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High design in San Miguel de Allende
At the Fabrica Aurora you can find wooden beams from long forgotten churches, wall sconces from old haciendas, fantastic bookshelves and beds, avant-garde iron sculptures and art from San Miguel’s stable of resident artists. Our favorite was a huge wall piece of ancient “loteria” (a Bingo-like game played in Mexico for centuries) with designs dating from 1735.
The place is as striking as you would imagine for a place holding top flight designers and architects: exquisitely sculpted cactus gardens, stores built among old textile machines and all kinds of interesting lines and angles. But while we can all enjoy a stroll through the Fabrica, its best pieces are obviously meant for people with money. A cool old wooden door can cost thousands of dollars. But like they say in Mexico, dreaming doesn’t cost a thing.
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Beauty queen doesn’t hold a grudge
Former U.S. Miss Universe contestant Rachel Smith, who took a tumble during the 2007 pageant and was ungraciously booed by the Mexico City crowd, is back in the Mexican capital and says she holds no ill will from the incident. In an interview with the News, Smith says she’s “moved past the incident” and thinks that Mexico is a “vital partner” for the United States.
Smith gives a rather nuanced and optimistic take on the state of Mexico/U.S. relations. Her call for a closer relationship would probably get some enthusiastic cheers from the folks that booed her last year. Here’s what she told News reporter Therese Margolis:
“The economic recession is going to hit every country, and Mexico and the United States can better weather the crisis if they join forces and see each other as allies rather than competitors. We have to move beyond the things that divide us, such as immigration and drug-trafficking problems, and find common solutions by working together. There are always going to be issues that create tensions and antagonisms, but we have to look beyond them and focus on what unites us. I don’t think that the bilateral relationship has reached its full potential, and that is a shame.”
That’s actually a good synopsis of what a lot of top Mexican pundits were saying in the days leading up to the U.S. election, that whoever wins needs to see Mexico as more than a security problem.
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Plane crash kills “brains” behind Mexico’s drug war
Three days after the shocking plane crash that killed Mexico’s second highest ranking official, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, the question on everybody’s mind is, who’s to blame?
The Mexican government insists that so far, all signs point to a tragic accident. The running hypothesis is that the small plane was flying too close to a massive 767 passenger jet as it came in for a landing at Mexico City’s airport, smack in the middle of the city. According to this argument (in which both the pilot and control tower have been singled out for blame), the small Lear Jet got caught up in the 767’s “wake turbulence,” causing the pilot to lose control and crash in a busy section of Las Lomas, a well-to-do neighborhood.
But many people here believe more nefarious forces are at work, namely Mexico’s increasingly violent drug cartels. Mourino was tasked with carrying out President Felipe Calderon’s confrontational war against the cartels; also killed on the plane was former top organized crime prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, considered by many as Mexico’s mastermind in the drug war.
If the crash was the result of cartel sabotage, it would mark yet another level in the increasingly bitter war with the federal government. Cartels previously targeted the city of Morelia, throwing a grenade into a crowd celebrating Mexican Independence Day. If it turns out that the cartels were behind the crash, gird yourself for proclamations that Mexico has officially become the next Colombia.
There’s no hard evidence pointing to the cartels, nor has there been and claiming of credit. But there’s no doubt the crash benefits the cartels. As Austin-based Stratfor wrote in an analysis, “(T)he greatest impact of the crash is the loss of the brains behind Mexico’s operations against drug cartels…it is clear that replacing them will not be easy.”
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Latin America not expecting too much from Obama
In Mexico and throughout Latin America the feeling is that the Bush administration has largely ignored the region. If it didn’t have to do with drugs or border security, most here believed, the United States wasn’t interested. Now that worries over terrorism have been replaced by worries over a cratering economy, Latin America still seems far from becoming a focus for the incoming administration.
“Obama has said little about the relationship with Mexico and in fact, there’s little to be hopeful about in the short term,” wrote the influential Mexico City daily El Universal on Wednesday.
And here’s what Mexico City office worker Juan Juarez told us when we did a round of man on the street interviews after the election: “I think that for Mexico it doesn’t make a big difference who won the presidential election in the United States, since the Americans will continue their cold and distant way of treating issues of importance to us like immigration reform.”
That sentiment echoed throughout the region. Guatemalan Chamber of Commerce President Edgardo Wagner said he isn’t expecting much from an Obama presidency. “The issue of immigration will continue to be treated the same way,” he said. “If in better times the United States didn’t support us, now even less so.”
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Government officials killed in fiery Mexico City plane crash
Just when you thought nothing could knock the U.S. election off of front pages here, comes news of a devastating plane crash that local media is reporting killed Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino and the former chief organized crime prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos. The small plane reportedly carrying the officials left San Luis Potosi earlier this evening and crashed near Mexico City’s periferico, the main highway loop encircling the city, at about 7 p.m., killing everyone on board.
Television reports showed several cars burning at the scene of the crash, which occured in a heavily populated area of Mexico City near Reforma avenue, the city’s main business corridor. According to local media reports, the twin motor Lear Jet-45, may have had a problem as it tried to land in Mexico City’s airport. No reports have suggested foul play or a bombing linked to Mexico’s drug cartels.
We’ll have more information tomorrow.
UPDATE: Top Mexican officials are downplaying the possibility that the plane crash was the result of foul play, but say it could be days or weeks before we know for sure. No reports yet of drug cartels claiming credit for the crash. After a recent grenade attack in Morelia, rival cartels draped signs throughout the country blaming each other for the attack.
2nd UPDATE: Here’s a statement on the crash just put out by Ambassador Tony Garza announcing U.S. help with the investigation:
I awoke this morning, reflecting on the tragic crash last night that took the lives of Secretary of Government Juan Camilo Mourino, former SIEDO head Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, our former colleague at SRE Miguel Monterrubio - whom I knew personally - and so many other victims. My heart truly goes out to their families, and I offer my solidarity and sympathy in these trying moments.
This is a tragic loss for Mexico. I have had the honor of knowing and working with these excellent men on many important facets of our bilateral relationship. I have always admired the dedication and intelligence of Juan Camilo Mourino. I have the greatest respect for the sheer bravery of Santiago Vasconcelos. I remember well the friendly collegiality of Miguel Monterrubio. Their loss will rightly be mourned by the whole nation.
Part of grieving is the desire to know exactly what happened. It is important to reserve judgment on the cause of the crash until investigations are completed. At the invitation of the Mexican government, the United States will do all it can to assist in the investigation that Mexican authorities immediately initiated into this tragic accident. Two Federal Aviation Administration investigators here in Mexico on other business were called to the scene last night and are working closely with Mexican investigators. A team of investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived this morning from Washington, D.C., and will coordinate with the Mexicans leading the investigation to support them however they can. They will be further supported by the United States’ best evidence analysts, the Washington-based Evidence Response Team, which was recently involved in the investigation of a Lear jet crash in South Carolina.
I would ask that we all hold in our thoughts and in our prayers all the victims of this terrible accident, both those aboard the plane and those killed and injured on the ground. Today we not only mourn the loss of our friends and colleagues, but stand in solidarity with the Mexican people.
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Puebla: Death is just a dream
We headed to Puebla this weekend for Dia de los Muertos, actually a three-day event encapsulating Halloween and All Saints Day. Puebla is one of Mexico’s most beautiful city’s anyways, but during Day of the Dead festivities it became a magical place of brightly festooned altars, wandering ghouls and mysterious nooks and crannies filled with hanging skulls. When night fell, city officials projected a creepy ghost story on Puebla’s imposing colonial cathedral. Children dressed as mummies and wolfmen trolled the main plaza asking for their “calaverita;” not a piece of candy, but a coin or two.
Puebla’s newspapers carried front page stories about how the economic crisis has dampened some of the enthusiasm: higher prices, fewer remittances and the weakened peso meant people bought less flowers and built smaller altars. Indeed, traffic at Puebla’s municipal cemetery was painfully slow when we visited. But in the main plaza, the altars continued to blaze brilliantly; some heartwarming, some downright creepy. Here are a few (note that the altar of the two slumping old people is particularly sad: it’s dedicated to all the grandparents who died alone and abandoned by their children who were too busy to take care of them while they were alive.)
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Mexico prepares for massive return of migrants
Carlos Villanueva, the president of the Worldwide Association of Mexicans Abroad, told El Universal newspaper today that “Everyone is living their own personal hell; the American dream has stopped being a dream.”
Over the last few months, we’ve been traveling through the Mexican countryside, trying to figure out what this return exodus will mean for Mexico. We’ve found extreme dislocation for the children of returning migrants, many of whom were born or raised in the U.S. and now find themselves in what is, to them, a foreign country.
On the positive side, we’ve found migrants who have been transformed by their experience in the U.S. and returned determined to change the corrupt politics of their hometowns. For some experts, these returning migrants represent the best hope for bringing true democracy to Mexico’s rural countryside.
But it’s not clear yet what the economic impact will be. The migrants are returning to the same poverty that drove them out - Mexico’s campo hasn’t gotten any better over the last decade. And Mexico still can’t create enough jobs for the people that remain, let alone for the returnees.
The hope among many officials is that the returnees will bring enough money to start small businesses and act as an economic spark in their mostly devastated communities. But if the tales we are reading are true, of migrants returning destitute and broke, the future could be grim indeed.
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Marion Jones update - after prison, she bears all to Oprah
As we reported last week, there’s still a place where Marion Jones remains in a hero - in her mother’s native Belize, where she was named Sports Ambassador after her showing in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. “She is seen as a hero here,” tour guide Daniel Itza told us. “Every Belizean thinks she got a bad deal.”
Jones, who was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to prosecutors about taking performance enhancing drugs, gave her first interview this week - to Oprah - after being released in September.
“When I stepped on that track, I thought everybody was drug-free, including myself,” AP quoted Jones as saying. “I apologize for having to put everybody through all of this…I’m trying to move on. I hope that everybody else can move on, too.”
She also told Oprah she “thought the substance was flaxseed oil when her coach gave it to her, but she later learned from prosecutors that it was the designer steroid.”
A planned sports complex dedicated to Jones in Belize City is currently halted because of lack of funding.
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Mexico embassy spy case: Burn after reading
Austin-based Stratfor.com has a fascinating look at the implications, and limits, of the alleged drug cartel mole inside the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart write that the suspected spy was a foreign service national investigator, or FSNI. Embassies throughout the world depend on local hires to fill many positions since it would simply cost too much to import all of an embassy’s workers from the States. But while most FSNs are working the switchboard or driving the embassy bus, others act as the embassy’s crime experts and link between the embassy and local law enforcement.
Such FSNIs are “the long-term keepers of the contacts with the host country government and will always be expected to introduce their new American bosses to the people they need to know in the government to get their jobs done.” While diplomats and attaches come and go, the FSNIs represent the institutional knowledge at the embassies. They are the ones who call the local police chief during emergencies in the middle of the night and nurture relationships by plying local officials with bottles of scotch.
The two analysts go on to write that corruption among FSNIs is not uncommon: it’s usually things like selling access to visas, but also some hardcore spying, like is alleged at the Mexican embassy. Because of such risks, FSNIs are kept out of parts of the embassy where classified information is kept. “It is assumed that any classified information FSNs can access will be compromised,” they write. Some FSNIs are actually moles planted by the host country.
The alleged spy, who worked with the U.S. Marshals Service, would not have had direct access to classified information, nor would he have sat in on sensitive operational meetings, the analysts write. “In the intelligence world, however, there are unclassified things that can be valuable intelligence,” they write. “These include the names and home addresses of all the DEA employees in the country, for example, or the types of cars the special agents drive and the confidential license plates they have for them.”
But given his limits to information at the embassy, the analysts conclude that “it is unlikely that this current case resulted in grave damage to DEA operations in Mexico.”
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Felipe: the spy who infiltrated the U.S. embassy?
According to the Washington Post, the alleged spy may have given his narco bosses information about the U.S. hunt for Craig Petties, who was accused of running a huge marijuana and cocaine ring “that stretched from Mexico to Texas, Mississippi and Memphis.” Petties was arrested in January.
The U.S. State Department is investigating the possible leak of other DEA investigations within Mexico, but embassy officials haven’t commented yet.
The Mexican press seems to be taking a bit of glee in the latest episode, which is a departure from the normal storyline of corruption within Mexican agencies. Today’s El Universal blared in a font size usually reserved for national disasters or presidential election results: “Spy easily made a joke of U.S. security.”
Felipe supposedly worked for the Beltran-Leyva organization, a Sinaloa-based group that until recently had an alliance with a group led by “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most wanted drug lord. The so-called Federation has apparently split however, leading to spiraling violence, especially in Ciudad Juarez, which has seen more than 1,000 drug killings this year.
The alleged embassy spying is part of a larger ring of Beltran-Leyva spies who reportedly infiltrated Mexico’s top organized crime intelligence unit, in what’s being billed as Mexico’s worst corruption case in the last decade.
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Belize: life between Venezuela and the United States
Belize represents a pretty good case study of what is going on in Latin America in terms of regional alliances. In recent years, the U.S. has seen its ideological hegemony upended in many countries by Venezuela and its oil largess. Thanks to windfall oil profits, Venezuela has been able to provide oil and humanitarian assistance throughout the region, in an attempt to win the goodwill of a number of poor countries. In many cases, Latin American experts say, Venezuela has stepped into a void. The United States, many here complain, only thinks of aid in terms of its own national security - drugs, illegal immigration and terrorism. In 1996, USAID closed its Belize office, after 13 years and $110 million in development aid.
We recently interviewed Belizean Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who gave us a look into the Venezuela/United States dynamic. Venezuela recently gave Belize $20 million in aid (a large amount in a nation of just 300,000 and almost ten times what the U.S. government gave Belize in 2006). Belize also gets cheap oil from Venezuela through Petrocaribe, in which Venezuela sells oil to Caribbean countries through long-term, 1 percent loans and lets the countries pay in local goods like bananas and sugar.
“We understand that Chavez wants to act as a kind of counterweight to U.S. hegemony in the Caribbean region,” he continued. “We do recognize that in supporting him and expressing solidarity with him by way of regional programs we…might run the risk of some U.S. displeasure, but we too have to follow our interests.”
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Marion Jones still a hero in Belize
Driving through Belize City, we came upon this lonely sight: the as-yet-unfinished national sports complex dedicated to disgraced Olympic star Marion Jones. While Jones’s reputation has been thoroughly spoiled in the United States, where she was just released from prison for lying to federal investigators about a steroids investigation, she remains beloved in Belize, where her mother was born. Jones, who holds joint Belize/U.S. citizenship, was stripped of her five 2000 Olympic medals after it became clear she was using performance enhancing drugs.
“She is seen as a hero here,” tour guide Daniel Itza told us. “Every Belizean thinks she got a bad deal.”
Jones, who was born in Los Angeles, celebrated her winning sprints in Sydney with both the American and Belizean flags, and was later named Belize’s Sports Ambassador at Large.
But her sports complex is mired in a financial morass almost as messy as her steroid scandal. The government of Belize, citing the high cost of steel and other building materials, now wants to focus on upgrading existing sports facilities rather than building the new complex. According to Belizean news reports, construction on the sports complex, which would seat 5,000 and serve as a training ground for Belizean athletes, has been continuously delayed since at least 2002, during which time she’s gone from global megastar to prisoner.
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Belmopan: Belize’s capital keeps it weird
We just got back from a trip to Belize, where we spent a night in the capital, Belmopan. I think I can honestly say that Belmopan is the strangest city we’ve encountered in nearly three years in Latin America. Imagine a slightly frayed, Edwards Scissorhands-style suburb plopped in the middle of thick jungle. With just over 7,000 residents, Belmopan is a city built on politics and little else: while the rest of Belize is a riot of brightly colored clapboard houses (many on stilts), Belmopan is filled with neat, master planned communities, filled with parks for the children of the city’s many bureaucrats.
We were in Belmopan to interview Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who made history by becoming Belize’s first black leader in February. Despite being a majority-black country for many years, Belize was governed by whites and mestizos for most of its history.
The federal area is as bizarre as the rest of the city: hulking concrete buildings connected by abandoned-looking paths and cracked sidewalks. We arrived during heavy rainfall and many of the city’s bureaucrats, we were told, were off attending to floods in other cities. The place felt like a cemetery. We saw nary a soul as we puttered around, waiting for out appointment. When we entered the building housing the prime minister’s office, a bored-looking security guard shooed us up some back stairs. The third floor was desolate and for a minute I wondered if we were in the right place. It turned out the prime minister was indeed there, and despite the flooding spoke with us at length (look for a story on Barrow next week).
We returned to our hotel, the Bullfrog Inn, whose bar is the most happening in the city: a mix of bureaucrats in pressed slacks, tourists fresh from exploring the jungle and American oil workers (Belize recently struck black gold in a remote region of Mennonite farmers).
We got dinner at one of the many Chinese restaurants in town (the Chinese arrived in Belize last century and now own countless restaurants and convenience stores throughout the country).
So what accounts for Belize’s bizarre capital? In 1961 Hurricane Hattie leveled much of Belize’s historic capital, the seaside city of Belize City. Rather than rebuild in Belize City, officials decided to pack up, move inland and start from scratch in 1970. A plan to induce residents to follow the bureaucrats never really caught on and it wasn’t until 2005 that the U.S. moved its embassy from Belize City to the jungle capital.
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Divided Mexico passes Pemex reform ‘light’
But the final version is a far cry from the dramatic overhaul many conservatives, analysts and oil executives hoped for. Think a flu shot instead of open heart surgery. While the reform does give Pemex a little more independence to invest its revenue in technology, it doesn’t allow joint ventures or direct investment in Pemex by private or foreign companies. It allows Pemex to contract with foreign firms, but not allow them share in profits, which some experts said was necessary to spur more exploration.
Some are doubtful that the reform will do enough to boost falling oil production. According to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday: “While the changes would be historic given Mexico’s longstanding antagonism to foreign participation in its oil sector, the new laws may not go far enough to attract interest from big oil companies or help the country pump more oil anytime soon.”
Mexico’s oil production hit a 13-year low in September. Opponents of the reform say Mexican officials are deliberately strangling Pemex to artificially create the need to allow private investment. Regardless, few disagree Pemex is facing a crisis.
Despite the watered down version of the bill, which won the support of leftist PRD legislators, opposition leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a PRD leader, mounted a raucous protest against the reform. He mobilized supporters to block the entrance to the Mexican Congress, forcing senators to meet and vote at an alternative location.
Lopez Obrador has built a large movement around the issue all summer long, and as voting time neared, he didn’t seem ready to back down. This morning he called for acts of civil resistance, although it’s not yet clear what those would consist of.
The Pemex dustup also highlights the growing schism within the PRD, pitting AMLO’s supporters against a more moderate wing that favors negotiation with political rivals.
The reform proposals will now be sent Mexico’s lower house, where they will likely be passed quickly and handed over to Calderon.
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well since calderon has been in office los zetas have been robbing the poor and kidnapping more then ever. at these times when natives are returning home,for the hollidays or because there is no more work in the usa, remember we are in a reccesionhere in
... read the full comment by yole | Comment on The PRI rises again Read The PRI rises again
God help Mexico if the corrupt good old boys PRI ring returns to power, it could potentially be as bad as Russia’s communists making a come back. Not quite, but unless they show that the reform wing is in control and not some leftist nut that wants
... read the full comment by eljefejesus | Comment on The PRI rises again Read The PRI rises again
Proud to have my elbow included in this photo.
... read the full comment by Joy | Comment on Ode to carnitas Read Ode to carnitas
Carnitas is basic food. I just usually go over to Fiesta Market and buy a kilo with rice, beans and pico de gallo. Que sabrosa!
... read the full comment by sanmiguel | Comment on Ode to carnitas Read Ode to carnitas
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