mexico review

Candidates for Congress Who Gets to Run? And Who Decides?

Unfit for Hollywood A Mexican Author Remembers the Alamo

Shale Gas Mexico is Sitting Atop a Bonanza

¡Pleybol! What’s in Store For Mexican Baseball

On the Road AgainMexican Bus Travel andThe Stuff of Memories

PEOPLE!:!POLITICS!:!CULTURE!:!TRAVEL FROM MEXICO. IN ENGLISH.

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A BI-WEEKLYApril 1, 2012Mexico CityVol. 01 No. 0632 pages

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From the Executive DirectorBY ANA MARÍA SALAZAR : 2

They Said It Quotable quotes by, for and about Mexico : 3

The Dreaded ‘Dedazo’ Becomes a ‘Dedito’The way the parties select their congressional and gubernatorial candidates has one consistent outcome: The local rank-and-file hates it. BY TOM BUCKLEY : POLITICS : ELECTIONS : 4

Cinco de Mayo Hits 150 in StyleFor the celebrations in Puebla, the home of the holiday, local and state governments are thinking big.BY REBECCA SMITH HURD: ECONOMY & FINANCE : PUBLIC WORKS : 7

Mexico’s Shale GameThe country is sitting atop huge reserves of shale gas. Is it better to move quickly to exploit this energy resource, or hold back to see what develops?BY SEAN GOFORTH : ECONOMY & FINANCE : ENERGY : 10

By the NumbersHow much tequila gets exported? How much has the birth rate declined? Are single fathers common in Mexico? : 13

Landfill Economics vs. PoliticsSo much trash. So little space to put it.PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEITH DANNEMILLER: ECONOMY & FINANCE : WASTE MANAGEMENT : 14

Bus MemoriesMoving through Mexico by bus is faster, safer and more comfortable than it used to be. But there was something about the funky travel of the old days that made for more memories.TEXT & PHOTOS BY DAVID BRACKNEY : LIFE & LEISURE : TRAVEL : 18

Unfit for HollywoodOne of Mexico’s most prolific and popular writers has turned a lot of heads with his new book about the Battle of the Alamo. John Wayne would not approve.BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT : LIFE & LEISURE : BOOKS : 22

If That Doesn’t Take the PrizeA prestigious award, a plagiarism scandal, and a literary shoot-out.BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT : LIFE & LEISURE : BOOKS : 25

¡Pleybol!The Mexican Baseball League season is under way, accompanied by a noticeable buzz and a renewed sense of excitement. TEXT & PHOTOS BY TOM BUCKLEY: LIFE & LEISURE : SPORTS : 26

Only in MexicoHidden towers, empty stadiums, bogus beasts and other odds and ends. : LIFE & LEISURE : 30

Save the Dates …Some of the big events to watch for in Mexico in the coming months. : LIFE & LEISURE : EVENTS : 32

: On the coverThe road from California to Guadalajara goes through a lot of scenery changes along the way, but it starts off as a lonely desert highway near Mexicali. (Story on page 18.) Photography by David Brackney

CONTENTSMEXICO REVIEWApril 1, 2012

We were in make-up preparing to tape a pi-lot news program when the building started pitching and rolling at noon on March 20. Ironically, we were talking about the popu-lar belief that the Maya calendar predicts an apocalypse this year.

Fortunately, the magnitude 7.8 earthquake did not become a major di-saster although it has been qualified as the strongest quake in Mexico since the tragic temblors of September 1985.

Some significant damage occurred in several areas of Mexico City and in the towns close to the epicenter of the quake (along the Guerrero-Oaxaca border), so we certainly don’t want to minimize the incident. But perhaps it provides perspective with regard to the major events that await us in the remainder of 2012.

By the time you read this, Pope Benedict XVI will have returned to the Vatican after his first visit to Mexico. The presidential campaigns will have begun their final three-month stretch run to Election Day. And the annual nationwide shutdown that takes place during Holy Week will be under way.

We believe this issue of Mexico Review offers additional perspective, especially with regard to the ongoing electoral process (specifical-ly controversies in the candidate selection process in each party) and other developing issues.

Our concise report on how the state of Puebla is going about prepar-ing for the 150th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo is just the beginning of special coverage about Mexico’s glorious victory over the powerful French army in the Battle of Puebla and about the special appeal that state has for tourists and culinary travelers.

For our hard news readers, we provide a detailed look at how Mexico’s shale gas reserves impacts the nation’s energy sector. But for those of you who prefer lighter news, we’re sure you’ll enjoy reading our pre-view of the Mexican Baseball League and the review of a new book about the Alamo from a uniquely Mexican point of view.

Ana María SalazarExecutive Director

[email protected]

Shake-Up OffersRenewed Perspective

2!MEXICOREVIEW!:!April 1, 2012

Mexico Review@MexicoReview

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LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

E D I T O R I A LOscar McKelligan

PRESIDENT

Ana María Salazar VICE PRESIDENT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Fernando Ortiz LEGAL ADVISER

Tom Buckley EDITOR IN CHIEF

Kelly Arthur Garrett MANAGING EDITOR

Blake Lalonde ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Andrea Sánchez EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Daniela Graniel ART DIRECTOR

S A L E SVerónica Guerra de AlbertiCANCÚN REPRESENTATIVE

Abril de AguinacoCABO REPRESENTATIVE

Iker Amaya Álvaro Sánchez

U.S. REPRESENTATIVES

C O N T R I B U T O R S Keith Dannemiller

Sean Goforth Rebecca Smith Hurd

David Brackney Liliana Muciño

B O A R D O F D I R E C T O R SOscar McKelligan Ana María Salazar Yurek McKelligan Fernando Ortiz

AND THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO SAY THERE’S IMPUNITY IN CIUDAD JUÁREZ

“I’m surprised they didn’t give him a breathalyzer test for chocolate and accuse him of imbibing to many sugary drinks.”– The mother of a 6-year-old Ciudad Juárez boy who was fined for driving

imprudently and without a license after his toy motorcycle hit a pickup truck which, unfortunately for him and his family, belonged to a woman who claimed to be a municipal employee and was able to get the police to come to the scene quickly.

You’re okay, cabrón, even if you are a panista.’

Just Play, OK?

t’s true that outside the country

we’re known for the violence. There’s violence in Mexico, which everybody considers to be horrible, but we do have a normal life here. Art, letters and research all continue to flourish.”– Sculptor and painter Manuel Felguérez,

joining other Mexican artists, including

José Luis Cuevas and Vicente Rojo, in

urging President Calderón to promote art

over violence.

THE OLD SCHOOL

“Even today, you listen to people in high places inside the CFE talk and it’s like hearing comments from 30 years ago. They think it’s science fiction.” – Adrián Fernández, an energ y consultant with the Metropolitan Autonomous University, lamenting the slow pace of Mexico’s Federa l

– VOICE FROM THE CROWD AT CARLOS SANTANA’S MEXICO CITY CONCERTin early March, after the legendary guitarist issued an endorsement of Josefina Vázquez Mota, presidential candidate for the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

The VIEW from theINSIDE

Books? We Don’t Gotta Show You No Stinkin’ Books

“"IT’S A SILLY GOAL, OUTDATED, STUPID, CRAZY. ACCUMULATING BOOKS IS PASSÉ. WHY NOT PUT A MILLION BOOKS ON THE WEB SO THEY CAN BE CONSULTED FROM ANY STATE IN THE REPUBLIC, FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD?"”– Historian Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, responding to the news that the Vasconcelos Library, the huge national public library built during the Fox administration, is a million books shy from completing its collection as planned.

“Just from hearing the words ‘Oscar’ and ‘Mexican’ spoken together they

salivate chauvinistically, like Pavlov’s dogs. In their view there’s no more

important cinematic trophy, so they consider it an ‘honor’ that a fellow

countryman might win something that would mean nothing less than

the right to exist, professionally speaking ... They are simpletons who every year at this time turn a mere nomination into a panegyric, even though its only real importance is

monetary, and thereby do the bidding – for free, no less – of the Motion

Picture Association of America and the other U.S. film organizations.”

– Film critic Luis Tovar, commenting on the pre-Oscar excitement in

Mexico resulting from Demián Bichir’s nomination as Best Actor in a Leading Role. The award went to Jean Dujardin.

Oscar Fever

“I

April 1, 2012":!MEXICOREVIEW"3

theysaid it...

The Dreaded ‘Dedazo’ Becomes a ‘Dedito’

INTERNAL PARTY FRICTION HAS FLARED UP as local rank-and-file increasingly object to the imposition of candidates by national leadershipTEXT & PHOTOS BY TOM BUCKLEY


POLITICS ELECTIONS

A!fter the presidential candidates went silent in mid-February thanks to a 45-day campaign blackout imposed by the new

election law, the public was bombarded with the sordid business of internal party politics.

Reporters and analysts quickly tired of criticizing the blackout and attempting to cover the inactivity of the “presidencia-bles.” But they were not at a loss for long.

As political parties began selecting can-didates for federal and state posts, cries of protest grew to a din. The rank-and-file within the three major parties raised a clamor over the perceived imposition of candidates seen as unworthy or non-rep-resentative. Anger was directed at the use of the so-called “dedazo.”

While in power for 71 years, the Insti-tutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) estab-lished the tradition of allowing the outgo-ing president to handpick his successor. This anointment (“dedazo” literally means “big finger,” euphemistically signifying the pointing of the finger at the chosen candi-date) was basically unquestioned from the 1950s until the late 1990s.

The National Action Party (PAN) may have ousted the PRI in 2000, but many of the “institutions” of the old regime have survived. The “dedazo” is one of them, al-though it has evolved such that now cen-tral party leadership imposes its will on the candidate selection process with little re-gard to local realities. This prompted sev-eral columnists to suggest that the “dedazo” has now been transformed into “deditos” (“little fingers”).

“The party leadership is choosing can-didates with no regard to proposals made by local party o!cials and they have ig-nored vetos issued by local leadership,” says Soledad Loaeza, a Colegio de Méxi-co professor and columnist for La Jornada.

The rank-and-file as well as state party leadership has reacted noisily to the impo-sition. Candidates seem to have been cho-sen by national leadership to reward past loyalties and to hand power to those who have shown certain skills such as voter mobilization and election manipulation or to those who have exercised deferen-tial behavior.

The “deditos” have also been used to bring in non-party members with little regard for ideology. The notion that these outsiders represent a chance to win more votes – and thus more public funding – out-weighs allegiance to party doctrine. Each of

the three major parties has been wrestling with these dilemmas with varying degrees of internal dissension.

IGNORING DOGMA, PAST SLIGHTSThe Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) has a well-earned reputation as a brawling collection of tribes. Their evolu-tion from a frustrated faction of the PRI that sought to eliminate the “dedazo” in favor of greater internal party democracy has been stunted.

The PRD has been swelled by defect-ing PRIistas who brought with them their preference for old-time PRI practices. The recruitment of aggrieved members of the old ruling party encouraged members of the PRI to change colors without chang-ing ideology. This has served to encourage PRD tribalism rather than unify the party and muddled its originally leftist ideology.

When the PRD announced that Man-uel Bartlett would be its top candidate for senator in Puebla, the chattering classes were set abuzz. Bartlett, a hard-line PRI-ista, has an ignoble curriculum highlight-ed by his controversial participation in the 1988 presidential election. PRD found-er Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas was ahead in the early vote count when the vote count-ing machinery went on the fritz. When it came back up, PRI candidate Carlos Sali-nas de Gortari was ahead and he went on to win quite comfortably, according to the o!cial count. Bartlett, as interior secretary, was responsible for managing the election and the consensus is that he helped cheat Cárdenas out of victory.

Bartlett’s selection is supposed to help the PRD win greater presence in Puebla, but some top party politicians have react-ed with perplexity. The selection report-edly had the blessing of presidential can-didate Andrés Manuel López Obrador but that did little to stifle the dissent, especially since Bartlett is still a member of the PRI.

Sen. Carlos Navarrete said “I will not lift a finger to help Bartlett’s campaign.” But López Obrador apparently dismisses Dr. House’s maxim that “people don’t change” since he has told reporters that “we don’t think that people can’t change … we won’t pre-judge him” and “let those who are free of sin throw the first stone.” The leader of the leftist coalition known as DIA defend-ed Bartlett saying “Instead of questioning the merits of a candidate we should objec-tively consider who can win us more votes.”

Local Battles Spark Unrest Mexico City – The PRD has dominated the political scene in the capital since 1997 but internal dissension threatens the party’s supremacy, especially since iconic former Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador has cultivated close ties with the two other leftist parties. Now, if a PRDista fails to win a candidacy, the Labor Party or Movimiento Ciudadano is considered an option. This could weaken the PRD and cost it considerable public funding. Violence broke out at a March 16 PRD candidate selection forum and national leadership is scrambling into damage control mode. Mayor Ebrard is also reportedly upset that a gentlemen’s agreement with López Obrador was not honored. Ebrard was led to believe he would have significant nominating privileges after bowing out before the PRD presidential primary.

Morelos – Members of both the PRI and the PRD announced plans to file formal complaints with the election tribunal, accusing party leadership of using illegal procedures to impose candidates. The brother of the PRI state party leader was awarded a candidacy for state legislature. PRD protesters said candidate selection “put democracy back several years and damages internal dialogue.”

Chiapas – Local PRD members are furious that national leadership took control of the candidate selection process. Not only is the central committee accused of trying to handpick candidates that don’t have widespread local support, but the aggrieved local PRDistas say national leadership is more interested in promoting its presidential candidate in the state than in boosting local party membership. The dispute has its roots in the alleged rift between Gov. Juan José Sabines and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the presidential candidate.


PAN HIT BY DEFECTIONS

The federal deputy candidate spot awarded to Monterrey Mayor Fernando Larrazabal by PAN leadership only seven months after the same party o!cials attempted to force him out of the party left long-time PANi-stas in shock.

But only for a moment. Then came out-rage and massive defections, most impor-tantly by several seasoned and well-re-spected individuals. Larrazabal and his brother were damaged in August when members of a drug cartel set a Monterrey casino ablaze, killing 52 people. A videotape released days later appeared to show Jonas Larrazabal taking money from casino op-erators and he was accused of extortion (a charge that did not stick).

Rogelio Sada, a 50-year PAN veter-an, quit the party in disgust. Other activ-ists who quit the conservative party made it known that they thought the leadership had opened the party to political opportun-ists with little regard to party principles.

Similar outcries were heard in Chihua-hua where Deputy Javier Corral has earned a reputation of integrity and courage as he has battled Mexico’s monopolies from Congress. After he lost a PAN primary for a Senate candidacy, he accused his rivals of busing in voters from out of state. Local big-wigs – including the state’s first-ever PAN governor, Ernesto Ru"o, and elder states-man Luis Álvarez – signed a letter of pro-test. In an e"ort to sweep some problems under the proverbial blue-colored rug, the central committee fell back on the “dedito” to designate Corral as a Senate candidate.

In Mexico City, up-and-coming Assem-blywoman Lía Limón quit the party on March 20, citing a laundry list of irregularities in the primary process. Deputy Manuel Clouthier – son of the 1988 PAN presidential candidate – quit the party in February, decrying dirty tricks in keeping him out of the Sinaloa pri-mary for a Senate seat. Election authorities ordered the PAN to allow him to register, but he left the party instead.

When the PAN announced its Senate candidates in early March, regional party chiefs complained that Mexico City was over-represented, arguing that the PAN presence in the capital has shrunk yet its local leaders were rewarded. The afore-mentioned Limón was among the critics and she slammed the unchecked control exercised by the so-called “New Genera-tion” in Mexico City, calling them “a rank gang of horse thieves.”

Quintana Roo – Local members of the PRD raised strenuous objections when former Cancún Mayor Greg Sánchez was granted a senatorial candidate. Sánchez stepped down to run for governor in April 2010 but was arrested on drug charges. He was released late last year, but local residents are still rankled by the debt burden he ran up as mayor. The state PRD leadership in March announced it would boycott the election if the national committee didn’t rescind Sánchez’s candidacy.

Veracruz – The PAN’s candidate selection process was marred by significant irregularities such that the senatorial candidacy of Fernando Yunes Márquez, scion of a prominent local political clan, was at risk of being annulled. More than 150 violations were reported during the party primary, including one voting precinct that registered 118 voters but reported 1,303 ballots.

Guanajuato – José Ángel Córdova resigned his Cabinet post to contend for the PAN gubernatorial nomination in this conservative state. The hard-liners, known as El Yunque, thumbed their noses at President Calderón and imposed Miguel Márquez, the hand-picked choice of outgoing Gov. Juan Manuel Oliva. The PRI – fighting to steal the state from the PAN – then toyed with selecting Córdova as an external candidate, and well-known attorney José Luis Romero Hicks (brother of a former PAN governor of the state) was also linked to the nomination, but this proved to be little more than a media rumor. PRI leadership then opted to demonstrate that “we have no need to look outside our own house when our party has the best candidates available” (Pedro Joaquín Coldwell). Juan Ignacio Torres Landa – the son of Gov. Juan José Torres Landa (1961-67) was selected as PRI nominee. Ironically, the former federal deputy (1991-94) lost to Juan Carlos Romero Hicks in the 2000 Guanajuato gubernatorial election.

SKIRMISHES IN THE PRIThe former ruling party has exercised greater discipline in recent months after president Humberto Moreira was forced out in December and the alliance with the National Alliance Party was canceled.

However, the Gulf coast state of Tabas-co experienced some turmoil.

PRIistas have begun deserting in droves since the party announced on Jan. 19 that Jesús Alí de la Torre would be the “unity candidate” for governor. On March 10, the state party leader and the state delegate to the party’s National Executive Commis-sion were replaced, but that did not stop the defections. The critics accused the national party leadership of using the “dedazo” and many announced plans to support Arturo Núñez, the PRD gubernatorial candidate and a former hard-line member of the PRI.

In Mexico City, mayoral candidate Be-atriz Paredes is dealing with internal fric-tion. El Universal reported on March 20 that primary rival Cuauhtémoc Gutiérrez has conspired with the PRD to campaign against Paredes and her hand-picked can-didates in the capital. Paredes appeared set to cruise to the PRI candidacy but Gutiér-rez refused to step aside and a third candi-date was included in the primary race by election authorities who overturned the party’s decision to block his registration.

Writing in El Universal on March 20, po-litical analyst José Antonio Crespo summed it up best: “[The selection process] is one of the many abuses, one of the worst ‘jokes’ that the parties play on its constituents. … Instead of picking candidates for their knowledge and professionalism, they give seats to their spouses, relatives, compadres or use them to pay o" favors. That’s why we end up with nefarious legislators.”

Unfortunately, the parties have gamed the system and there is little that the vot-ing public can do since the politicians con-trol our democracy.


POLITICS ELECTIONS

W!hen Cinco de Mayo turns 150 this year, Puebla aims to finally get its due: The holiday, which marks

the anniversary of the victorious Battle of Puebla against the French in 1862, is fet-ed worldwide yet frequently misconstrued abroad as Mexico’s Independence Day.

To reclaim the occasion as their own, the city and state of Puebla are investing more than $62 million (800 million pesos) on public projects and special events, such as a massive parade, a night-time spectacular,

and the first International Mole Festival. The celebration promises not only to honor history, but also to reclaim Cinco de Mayo as distinctly “Poblano” with a local fiesta of global proportions.

PUBLIC PROJECTSA host of improvements to the state capital’s infrastructure are under way to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Puebla. The most notable is a viaduct named for Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza,

whose primary claim to fame is directing Mexico’s victory against the powerful French army. (His likeness appears on the 500-peso bank note issued in 2000.)

The viaduct will stretch 1.24 kilometers along Calzada Ignacio Zaragoza from Defensores de la República to Ejército de Oriente in the northeastern part of the capital.

The new road is expected to handle 4,800 vehicles per hour and improve access to Puebla’s Historic Center and nearby attractions, such as the Cinco de Mayo forts and monuments.

Cinco de Mayo Hits 150 in Style

LOCAL AND STATE GOVERNMENTS IN PUEBLA have invested millions on public projects and special events in advance of the sesquicentennial of the historic victory over the French. BY REBECCA SMITH HURD

Guadalupe Fort

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ECONOMY&FINANCEPUBLIC WORKS

Despite setbacks in its construction, Puebla Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle plans to inaugurate the viaduct in time for the 150th anniversary Cinco de Mayo parade. The traditional parade route has been modified to traverse the new thoroughfare, which ends at a pre-existing monument that pays tribute to the battle’s heroes.

Another project slated for completion by Cinco de Mayo is the roughly $20 million (more than 258 million pesos) police academy. The federal edifice is being built with funding from the Mérida Initiative (a U.S.-backed program aimed at improving Mexico’s judicial and security services) and the municipality of Amozoc. The new Ignacio Zaragoza Police Academy will train an estimated 6,000 law enforcement o!cers per year. The U.S. State Department provided $4 million (51.5 million pesos) for the center, for which the FBI and other security agencies are acting as advisers.

The governor also plans to break ground on the first Rural City, in San Miguel Tenextatiloyan, on May 5. The pilot program, supported by $15.6 million (200 million pesos) in local, state and federal funding, aims to combat population dispersion and to improve employment opportunities and access to services for some 4,000 residents in the state’s mountainous northeast. For starters, the community will supply edible mushrooms to Wal-Mart, according to the National Construction Industry Association (CMIC).

SPECIAL EVENTSCity and state officials are organizing an ambitious lineup of festivities for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Puebla. At least 100 artistic, academic, cultural and sporting events are planned, including a massive parade, a night-time spectacular, and the first International Festival of Mole.

The International Mole Festival will celebrate the state’s most iconic dish, mole poblano, with a two-day culinary conference on May 2 and 3. The event will bring international and national chefs together with rising regional stars to explore Poblano cuisine’s significance and influence worldwide. Celebrities scheduled to appear include chef-restaurateur Rick Bayless, cookbook author Mark Bittman, and mole authority Patricia Quintana.

This year’s Cinco de Mayo parade will vary from those in previous years with a new start time, route, and scope, although final confirmation is pending: The 2012 affair, marshaled by President Felipe Calderón, is set to begin at 4 p.m. Some 20,000 middle- and high-school students, 8,000 military troops, and decorative floats will make their way from Cuauhtémoc Stadium near the Puebla-Mexico City highway to the two hilltop forts made famous during the 1862 battle.

Mariachis entertain the crowds at the 2011 Cinco de Mayo parade in Puebla. This year’s parade route has been changed but it will still feature upward of 20,000 participants.

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ECONOMY&FINANCE PUBLIC WORKS

As before, the Defense Secretariat will stage a re-enactment of the historic battle on the grounds of the 25th Military Region headquarters in Puebla.

After the parade, a night-time spectacular – produced by Five Currents, the company that handled the opening and closing ceremonies of last year’s Pan-American Games in Guadalajara – is slated to take place from 8 to 10 p.m. in front of the forts to the east of the capital. The show will represent Puebla and all things Poblano in music and dance and will also feature a fireworks display, organizers say.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History is reportedly investing $3.5 million (45 million pesos) to spruce up the battle site and to expand its regional museum, which preserves artifacts from the Battle of Puebla.

For more information about Cinco de Mayo-related public projects and festivities, visit the state’s o!cial website, 5demayoPuebla.mx.

Rebecca Smith Hurd is the founder and editor of AllAboutPuebla.com, an English-language travel guide to the city and its environs.

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Gov. Rafael Moreno Valle has overseen the expenditure of more than $62 million on public projects and special events linked to the sesquicentennial.

The city of Puebla and its cathedral is visible just to the southwest from the hilltop forts.


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Mexico’s Shale Game

MEXICO SITS ATOP the world’s fourth-largest shale gas reserves, but has so far failed to cash in on the bonanza under way in Canada and the U.S. Could dithering turn out to be a virtue?BY SEAN GOFORTH

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ECONOMY&FINANCE ENERGY

Hubbub over shale gas grew wildly in 2011, in part because of the controversial Keystone XL pipe-line – slated to tran-sit gas from Cana-

da’s tar sands to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast – and in part because of disclo-sures about robust U.S. shale gas produc-tion that made the country a net energy ex-porter for the first time since 1949.

“Shale gas, the biggest energy innova-tion since the start of the new century, has turned what was an imminent short-age in the United States into what may be a 100-year supply,” says Daniel Yergin, a leading energy analyst and author of “The Quest: Energy, Security, and Remaking of the Modern World.”

Mexico, despite having the fourth-larg-est shale gas reserves in the world (behind China, the United States and Argentina), has been a passive observer of the trend.

Whereas shale exploration north of the border began in earnest a decade ago, it was only in March of 2011 that Pemex, Mexico’s state-owned energy monopoly, started drill-ing its first exploratory well at a site in Hidal-go, a town in the northern state of Coahuila. It produces 2.9 million cubic feet of gas a day.

Mexico is also a passive recipient: After a decade of steady natural gas imports, 2011 saw a spike in the amount of gas Mexico im-ported from the United States, accentuated by a 5 percent drop in Pemex’s gas output.

Without tapping its shale reserves, Mexico’s domestic demand for gas is ex-pected to outpace production by 6.5 per-cent annually for the next 15 years. Some-time before then, Mexico will become an overall energy – oil, natural gas, and coal – importer.

To avoid that fate, Pemex has an-nounced plans to explore an additional 175 shale gas sites across the country by 2015, and 6,500 sites by 2050. That shouldn’t be overly ambitious: last year Texas, for exam-ple, granted over 2,800 licenses to operate in its Eagle Ford shale reserve alone. But these medium-and long-term goals are un-realistic on the current track.

PEMEX RE-IMAGINEDPemex’s forte is oil, and while it has plenty of experience in natural gas the company is ill-suited to take advantage of emerging energy sources like shale.

Energy Secretary Jordy Herrera

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Until recently, Pemex’s monopoly ex-tended to basic petrochemicals, and giv-en that Mexico is already a major net im-porter of all manner of olefins, synthetics, and polymers, any serious commitment to shale would increase usage of “petchems” several fold. Constitutional restrictions will need to be loosened so that foreign gas companies can more easily partner with Pemex, bringing with them the tech-nological expertise and advanced equip-ment that Pemex lacks.

In short, if Mexico is to bring its esti-mated 681 trillion cubic feet of shale gas reserves to market, Pemex will need to un-dergo wholesale reform.

Jordy Herrera, Mexico’s energy secre-tary for the past eight months, is spurring Pemex in this direction. Within weeks of his appointment, Herrera initiated a push to substitute the source of Mexico’s long-term electricity needs away from nuclear power and toward natural gas.

The economic benefits would be signif-icant. According to Herrera, Mexico could draw $7 billion to $10 billion a year in for-eign investment through various Pemex partnerships. This would create roughly 100,000 jobs a year, directly and indirect-ly, out to the late 2020s.

It would also yield geopolitical gains. Mexico stands to achieve energy indepen-dence, insulating the country from volatile world gas prices for a number of decades – based on current estimates, Mexico has enough shale to meet domestic gas demand for 60 years.

A continent-wide gas-exporting bloc could be set to emerge, stretching from the Yukon to the Yucatán. TransCanada – the firm building the Keystone XL pipe-line – has already announced plans for a $500-million project to link a pipeline in the state of San Luis Potosí to Mexico’s na-tional pipeline system, with the final des-tination to be a power plant in the state of Querétaro. Not incidentally, integrating Mexico’s energy grid in this fashion would draw it closer into North America’s ener-gy market.

More fancifully, investment from U.S. companies could have knock-on e"ects in Washington, leading to a broad re-engage-ment of Mexico. Whereas Mexico repre-sented the “giant sucking sound” of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs in the 1990s, and a drug violence-riddled neighbor in the 2000s, it could become the go-to energy partner of this decade. Mexico’s international stand-ing could be further bolstered by invest-ment opportunities from energy-hungry rising powers.

Given these prospects, in December Herrera said that failure to intensively har-vest the shale gas reserves would be “unfor-givable.” But, paradoxically, dithering may serve Mexican interests.

A blip in the global energy market cur-rently allows Pemex to export oil for more than $100 a barrel, while the “bonanza” to the north has natural gas prices at histor-ic lows, down over 80 percent in the past five years. Reservations about domestic production of shale gas are also growing.


WILL SHALE PROVE SHALLOW?

As in the United States, environmentalists in Mexico say that the industrial process of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” used to force shale gas to the surface where it can be recovered, may pollute drinking water.

Rumor is also feeding worry that frack-ing could induce earthquakes, a rather dis-quieting prospect in a country with a histo-ry of massive earthquakes. Others question the real gain of shale gas given the immense energy expended from the fracking process.

A singular challenge to Mexico is lack of water. Coahuila, the epicenter of Mexico’s shale reserves, is the second-driest state in the country and is far removed from the type of water infrastructure needed to se-riously commit to fracking.

It’s anybody’s guess how much water might be required to frack in the arid north, and there are no publicly available feasibili-ty studies about the costs of getting the wa-ter infrastructure in place. So far, the gov-ernment’s only proposed solution involves vaguely defined “service clusters” installed around high concentrations of wells.

Meanwhile, technological advance-ment is proving to be a double-edged sword. Instead of maximizing efficien-cy and mitigating environmental disrup-tion as fracking proponents had hoped, more precise surveying technology is be-ing used to re-assess recoverable reserves, with some disheartening results.

The U.S. Department of Energy recent-ly cut its estimate of the amount of gas in Pennsylvania’s Marcellus site by two-thirds, and its nationwide estimate by over 40 percent. If the revised numbers turn out to be accurate, the claims of a 100-year sup-ply made by Yergin and industry lobbyists will be reduced to about 35 years.

Elsewhere, shale projects in Poland and Hungary have proven a bust. (By con-trast, within days of the downward revi-sions in the United States, Spain’s ener-gy giant Repsol made significant upward revisions to its estimates of Argentina’s shale reserves.)

A SEISMIC SHIFT If 2011 was the year of wide-armed em-brace of shale as the alternative fuel of the future, 2012 is shaping up to be the year of sober resignation – shale is just one ener-gy source, and it carries drawbacks just like all other fossil fuels.

Herrera, who spoke of slowly wind-ing down nuclear plants in October, has changed his tune of late, putting new nu-clear plants back on the table. Perhaps this is one way to hedge against shale gas.

On Feb. 20, the United States and Mexi-co agreed to cooperate when drilling for oil and gas along their maritime border in the Gulf of Mexico. Under the agreement, U.S. energy companies will be allowed to work

with Pemex in the Western Gap, an enor-mous area in the Gulf of Mexico that had previously been under moratorium.

Celebrated by shale advocates as a sign that Pemex is slowly liberalizing and similar land-based agreements are in the works, the deal could also be read as Pemex committing to o"shore projects instead of emerging possibilities on land.

What’s clear is the North American en-ergy market is changing. Since the 1970s, the U.S. represented the great maw where gas and oil from Canada and Mexico went for digestion. However, the continent is re-making itself as an energy corridor, with the U.S. producing more fuel and consum-ing less, while Mexico is producing less and consuming more. What’s unclear is how Pemex and the Mexican government will respond to this fundamental shift.

For now, soaring energy prices and lingering doubts about fracking comple-ment a wait-and-see approach. At some point though, Pemex will have to bend to the needs of a growing middle-class econo-my and either devise energy solutions with the help of foreign partners – and shale re-covery might be a promising way to start – or gradually cede its role as Mexico’s indis-pensible fuel provider altogether.

Sean Goforth is an analyst for Wikistrat, a geo-strategic consulting firm, and author of “Axis of Unity: Venezuela, Iran & the Threat to America” (Potomac Books, 2012).

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ECONOMY&FINANCE ENERGY

261.1 million Liters of tequila exported from Mexico in 2011, according to the Consejo Regulador de Tequila. It was the third straight year that tequila exports fell short of the 2008 high of 312.1 million liters.

75 Percentage of young Mexican adults, ages 18-29, that

opposes legalizing any currently outlawed drugs, including marijuana, according to a poll by UNESCO and Universidad

Iberoamericana.

33 Percentage of Mexicans ages 18-29 who say they would prefer

a non-democratic system of government if it would work better to solve problems of security and economics.

51 Percentage of UNAM students who are female. UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, is the nation’s

most important public institution of higher learning.

13,000 Approximate number of surveillance cameras operated in

Mexico City by law enforcement.

7.8 million Number of single mothers in Mexico today.

907,000 Number of single fathers in Mexico as of 2009.

52.6 Percentage of those single mothers who are in the work force,

totaling 4.1 million.

7.2 Average number of births per woman in Mexico in 1962.

39.3 million Population of Mexico in 1962

2.0 Average number of births per woman in Mexico in 2012.

112.3 million Population of Mexico in 2012.

434,000 Number of Mexicans under 18 who are married or living

together in a relationship, based on data from 2010 by INEGI, the National Statistics Institute.

32,000 Number of Mexicans between the ages of 12 and 14 who are

married or living together in a relationship.

19,000 Number of Mexicans under 18

who are either divorced or separated from a legal spouse.

481,855 Acres of forest land lost per year on average in Mexico between

2000 and 2010, according to Greenpeace.

70 Number of vertebrate species that have gone extinct in Mexico

in the last century, a rate of extinction that would normally take 3,000 years, according to UNAM researchers.


By the Numbers

Landfill Economics vs. PoliticsFor more than three decades, the Bordo Poniente

waste dump on the eastern outskirts of Mexico City has been the destination of the trash generated by the capital’s millions of residents. The vast site now con-

tains roughly 80 million tons of garbage across its 450 hect-ares (927 acres) as city authorities managed to keep the dump open almost 15 years longer than federal environment authori-ties wished. As local o!cials extended the life of the dump site, more than 12,000 tons of trash was arriving on a daily basis.

Finally, on Dec. 19, 2011, the Mexico City government closed the Bordo Poniente. Unfortunately, they had not finalized a re-placement site and they have not produced a long-term solution for dealing with the ever-increasing waste.

“They didn’t have a ‘Plan A’ and they don’t have a ‘Plan B’ either,” UNAM sociologist Héctor Castillo told the Houston

Chronicle. “They need large pieces of land that they don’t have in the city.”

Authorities quickly negotiated deals with smaller private dumps in the neighboring State of Mexico, but local residents objected to the importation of trash to their back yards, so to speak. Resulting protests and poor communication produced some chaos as trash started to accumulate on Mexico City street corners and garbage truck drivers were not informed of plans. Illegal dumping even continued at the Bordo Poniente un-til larger problems were averted as Mexico City o!cials finally began establishing a new garbage disposal system.

City o!cials say the shuttering of the Bordo Poniente will reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly and the capi-tal government has announced a plan to set up a bio-gas plant at the site.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KEITH DANNEMILLER


ECONOMY&FINANCE WASTE MANAGEMENT

The Bordo Poniente landfill was the reception point for 12,000 tons of trash generated daily by Mexico City until it was closed on Dec. 31, 2011.


Above, a junkyard dog prowls his section of the Bordo Poniente landfill. Below, a “pepenador” sifts through the piles of trash looking for recyclable materials.

Above, women separate plastics for recycling at the Bordo Poniente processing plant. The recycling plant operates around the clock. Below, garbage trucks line up at the La Viga transfer station in Mexico City.

“In real terms, the capital

releases 1.5 million tons of

methane gas per year into the atmosphere and

at the forefront is the Bordo

Poniente which holds 70 million

tons of garbage.”Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard


ECONOMY&FINANCE WASTE MANAGEMENT

Above, trucks park in front of the Bordo Poniente recycling plant to deposit garbage collected on the streets of Mexico City. Below, city garbage collectors take a break on the back of their trash truck.

Loaded with toxins and decomposing organic material, such dumps can leach poisons into groundwater and produce large amounts of methane gas, reported the Houston Chronicle in January. Sci-entists say methane gas has more than 20 times the atmosphere-warming impact as carbon dioxide. O!cials have said that the Bordo Poniente produces as mjuch as 20 percent of the Valley of Mexico’s heat-trap-ping emissions.

It is hoped that the capturing and resell-ing of the methane for energy generation can help o"set the cost of closing the Bordo Poniente. Reports have indicated the clo-sure cost Mexico City roughly $180 million.

THE IMPACT ON ‘PEPENADORES’Somewhat forgotten in the long-over-due closure of the dump site are the hun-dreds of unionized trash pickers – “pepe-nadores” – who make a living at the Bordo Poniente. The dump has a recycling plant that continues to operate since there are still millions of tons of garbage to scavenge through. In some areas, towers of garbage are piled over 15 feet high.

The plant operates round-the-clock on three shifts, every day. It is estimated that only one-tenth of the garbage sorted there can be set aside for recycling.

Professor Castillo, who has studied Mexico’s waste industry for several de-cades, told the New York Times that rough-ly 250,000 people depend on trash. “Street sweepers, garbage collectors, pepenadores, junk dealers and the families they support all depend on trash,” he said.

Keeping the separation plant running at the Bordo Poniente makes little economic sense, however. The logistics of the agree-ment made between Mayor Marcelo Eb-rard and the pepenadores means trash is still delivered to the Bordo Poniente then it is reloaded and taken to a new dump site after it has been sifted through.

The National Water Commission has filed an administrative complaint against the Mexico City government, charging that its failure to follow procedures with regard to the closure of the Bordo Ponien-te threatens the nearby Río Churubusco with contamination.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ebrard says 50 com-panies have expressed interest in bidding for the proposed bio-gas plant. The Wil-liam Clinton Foundation is helping to or-ganize the bidding process. .

—MEXICO REVIEW



life&leisure TRAVEL

Bus Memories

MOVING THROUGH MEXICO BY BUS today is fast, safe and comfortable. Thirty years ago? Not so much. Still, there was something about bus travel in those days … TEXT & PHOTOS BY DAVID BRACKNEY


ne sweltering morning in July 1982 at the bus station in Mexicali, Baja California, I had a rendezvous with destiny. That was the day I climbed aboard a Transport-es Norte de Sonora bus and set o" on a 36-hour journey to Guadalajara. I was a month out of college, and knew very little about life beyond the United States, hav-ing never left my country except for a short cross-border hop to Tijuana at 15. My hope was to change that.

I took my window seat. It was a second-class bus, the most a"ordable transporta-tion in a country known at the time for its low cost of living. I would make the best of my high school Spanish and rely on the kindness of strangers for help in ordering roadside meals.

As the shantytowns and industrial parks of Mexicali gave way to tracts of ir-rigated cropland, I craned my neck and gazed about at the standing-room-only crowd that shared the bus with me – wiz-ened old farm workers, teenage mothers nursing their babies, wide-eyed children who shamelessly stared at the lone grin-go onboard.

Behind the wheel was a sweaty, 40ish man in a T-shirt, with a bushy mustache and a comfortable paunch. I couldn’t help but think he was the typecast of a Mexican bus driver. Now and then he’d reach into a communal ice chest for another gulp from a tall bottle of Coke. He faithfully waved whenever a bus passed going in the other direction. Above the windshield, a pinup of Miss August shared space with a wooden crucifix and a tiny fan that jerked back and forth in a futile attempt to cool anything past the second row.

Throughout the day and long into the night, salsa and ranchera tunes thumped from someone’s boom box. The farm-land of the Mexicali Valley faded into the

1982: A blissful moment, somewhere in central Mexico. The author was already thinking about his next trip south.

O cactus-strewn desert of Sonora, which in turn gave way to the lush tropical lowlands of Sinaloa. I barely slept that night (I’ve nev-er slept well on moving vehicles) and real-ized sometime before dawn that the blis-tering heat of the desert was gone, replaced by stifling humidity as we approached the Tropic of Cancer. There would be no relief till mid-afternoon, when we left the resort town of Mazatlán behind and began the long climb into the western Sierra Madre.

Too bad I hadn’t paid more attention in Spanish class. I would have put that

knowledge to good use with my seatmate for much of the way – a generously curved, long-haired lass with light brown skin and freckled checks who from all appearanc-es was unattached. I’d hit the bus seating jackpot, but all I could do was smile ner-vously and repeat too many times, “Hace mucho calor.”

Instead I struck up an acquaintance with a young man about my age named Roberto, perhaps the only other English-speaker onboard. Heading home after a stint working the fields in the Imperial Valley, he insisted on paying for my lunch, and I later returned the favor with a round of soft drinks.

I sometimes wonder if Roberto remem-bers me. He just might, seeing how he was there when I made the bemusing discov-ery that tacos in Mexico had nothing in

common with the fare I’d been eating at Taco Bell all my life. I don’t know who was more perplexed – Roberto, who struck an odd look and said “¿Nada más?” when I or-dered my two tacos, or me as I stared at two pairs of teensy tortillas on my plate, each topped with a few scraps of meat.

THEN … My Spanish would get a good brush-up on that trip, as I struggled to field seeming-ly endless questions from my bus mates.

Where was I from? What was I doing in Mexico? How long was I planning to stay?

I also observed Mexican commerce at its basest level. Any time we pulled into a town, kindergarten-aged girls and tooth-less old women climbed aboard and pa-raded down the aisle, loudly hawking ice cream bars, peanuts, chewing gum and trashy fotonovelas. For the price of a bus ticket, I was receiving far more than I had ever bargained for – an immersion course in Mexican customs, language, culture and food – something I never would have got-ten had I traveled by cruise ship, airplane or automobile.

Unwittingly too, I was sowing the seeds of a love a"air with the United States’ south-ern neighbor that continues to this day.

I also rediscovered the power of prayer. I invoked the Almighty’s name over and


life&leisurelife&leisure TRAVEL

over – every time our driver pulled out in-to oncoming tra!c so he could pass oth-er vehicles, often with a blind curve just a few meters ahead. As best I recall, the long road south was two lanes the entire way, and mostly devoid of shoulders. And in the mountains of western Jalisco, it was reduced to one lane, thanks to a landslide that had swept away a full lane of roadway, forcing vehicles to take turns and creep around a harrowing drop-o" in the dark. (Seems my pleas to a higher power were not to be mocked.)

Modern four-lane toll roads have ap-peared across the country and reduced travel times substantially. Case in point is the trip from Mexicali to Guadalajara, which takes only about 30 hours now. And while Greyhound and other long-distance bus lines have fallen on tough times in the United States, squeezed by the airlines, the Mexican lines continue to thrive, thanks in part to the demise of passenger rail ser-vice in the early 2000s.

To help ease congestion, many bus stations have moved from downtown to the city outskirts; I still recall my sec-ond visit to Guadalajara when I realized the terminal had relocated, after bewil-deredly searching at night for any famil-iar landmark.

And like everything else, computers have revolutionized Mexican bus tran-sit. Every carrier has a full-service web-site where you can reserve a seat days or even weeks ahead of time. No more trips to the bus station days in advance to pur-chase your tickets.

Then again, you can still walk up to the counter, lay down your cash and buy your tickets a few minutes before departure. I did just that earlier this year on my most recent Mexican bus trip, when my daugh-ter Martha and I made the five-hour trek between Mexico City and Xalapa. The Ve-racruz state capital had long been on my list of must-see cities, and we spent three memorable days there – exploring down-town alleyways, hanging out in colonial plazas, spending an afternoon in the Mu-seum of Anthropology (one of the best of its ilk in Mexico), dancing salsa late one night to a band in the central zócalo. The bus ride – first-class this time – was sce-nic and trouble-free, highlighted mainly by iTunes sharing and plenty of father-daughter chitchat. In case you wondered, a one-way ticket is 265 pesos, or about $20.

Born in Mexico City, Martha turns 20 this year, and we’ve shared many of these trips since her early grade-school years. With any luck, we have plenty more of them ahead of us, each to be filled with unique memories and misadventures that will forever bond us.

Yet I’ll always have a special fondness for that first trip in the summer of ’82. I still have the journal I kept that summer, and I still pull it out to re-read on occasion, starting with the entry dated Wednes-day, July 21, 1982 – the day a Mexican bus nudged my life in a new direction.

It was close to midnight when I tramped o" the old coach in downtown Guadalajara, bleary-eyed, sti"-legged, badly in need of a bath. I had loved every minute of the previous day-and-a-half, and as I fetched my bags and trudged o" into the darkness, I knew that somehow

or another, my life’s course had been in-alterably changed.

I’d spend the next three months ex-ploring central and southern Mexico by bus and rail, tacking on a few ex-tra weeks after the peso collapsed in the waning days of the López Portillo administration. (A bus ticket that had cost $50 a few days before was now just $25 or $30.) I headed north reluctantly when funds ran low, aware that student loan bills were coming due back home. I knew, though, that someday I’d be back.

… AND NOW

Since that inaugural summer, I’ve logged tens of thousands of kilometers by Mexi-can bus, criss-crossing the country from the deserts of Baja to the jungles of Chi-apas. A goodly number of those journeys came during the seven years I worked as a journalist in Mexico City in the 1990s, when I realized a longstanding dream to live full-time in Mexico.

Mexico has changed in the last 30 years. So has the bus service. Nowa-days, pretty much all buses are AC-equipped, and most have TV monitors that distract passengers with lowbrow action or horror flicks. Onboard rest-rooms – not so common in 1982 – are the norm on nearly all long-haul buses now. Even if you don’t need one, it’s re-assuring to know it’s there.

“Every carrier has a web site where you can reserve a seat ahead of time.”

2012: The author and his daughter Martha, on the road to Xalapa, with an iPod cord dangling from his ear. Music-listening techniques are just one of many changes in bus travel in the last 30 years.


Unfit for Hollywood

Paco Ignacio Taibo II is one of those outspoken popular writers whose work usually finds a way into the national conversation. Unflagging and prolific, he’s managed to publish more than 50 volumes without softening his activism outside the book covers, or his rigorous standards inside them. The quantity and quality of his output has

done much to destroy stereotypes about the energy level of slov-enly, overweight, chain-smoking, 60-something bookish types.

Taibo, or PIT II as he’s often called, invented the Mexican de-tective genre with his novels of Héctor Belascoarán Shayne, the hipster sleuth with an eye-patch. He once coauthored a novel with Subcomandante Marcos, the head of the modern Zapatis-ta rebel movement. He may be best known for his recent non-fiction, including a history of the 1968 massacre of student pro-testers, and biographies of Che Guevara and Pancho Villa.

As subject matter choices, 1968, Che and Pancho Villa aren’t exactly stretches for a Mexican writer (PIT II was born in Spain, and came to Mexico with his family as a pre-teen). But that’s not at all the case with his latest e"ort. If people in Mexico are talking about the battle of the Alamo these days, it’s entirely be-cause PIT II has written “El Álamo” (Planeta, 2011, 158 pesos).

Before the release of PIT II’s latest book, and the publicity campaign that accompanied it, the Alamo and its battle count-ed for next to nothing in Mexico. The author estimates that there are at least 5,000 titles dealing with the Alamo, almost all of them from the United States. “On the other hand, the Mexican public has virtually no access to the true story of the battle of the Alamo, or to false ones either,” he writes in the prologue. “There aren’t many more than a dozen [Mexican] books about the Texas war, and the majority of them consider the battle to be a minor inci-dent, not worth studying or telling about.”

How can that be? Wasn’t the battle of the Alamo a rare occur-rence in which Mexico routed the gringos? It was. But the only reason anybody remembers the Alamo, so to speak, is because of the myth that surrounds it. That myth is irrelevant in Mex-ico; it’s an American thing. And without the myth, the battle of the Alamo is just another bloody battle.

But, oh what a myth. The idea that a handful of gritty heroes held off endless waves of well-armed Mexican soldiers long enough to tilt the war in favor of the forces of liberty before dying nobly is so fixed in the American psyche that a lot of people who think they know bet-ter sometimes find themselves sinking back into it.

PIT II gives a surprising list of American writers who have parroted the myth, including Whitman, Stephen Crane, Frost and Steinbeck. He might have mentioned folk singers. Tex-as songwriter Jane Bowers wrote a tune for the Kingston Trio called “Remember the Alamo,” with lyrics almost comical in

their unnuanced faithfulness to the myth’s clichés, including “the young Davy Crockett” (he was 49) who ¨lay laughing and dying.” Few folksingers have more solid anti-war credentials than Donovan, yet the Scot covered Bowers’ bellicose song in the heat of the sixties without a hint of irony. To him, it was an American folk song. End of discussion.

PIT II reserves several chapters in his book for describing the Alamo myth’s means of perpetrating itself, starting with the early exaggerations, through its o!cial patriotic trappings, and on to its 20th-century glorification on television and in film. But he’s not interested in the psychology of national mythmaking in general. That’s too bad in a way; the topic would be a fertile one.

Mexico, of course, manufactured its own inspirational myth out of the ashes of an ignoble defeat – the one about the six boy cadets who jumped to their deaths rather than surrender to the invading U.S. Army in the battle of Chapultepec a decade after the Alamo. The tale is mostly hooey, and has been called out as such in a number of works, most recently (and, inevitably, con-troversially) by Francisco Martín Moreno in his popular com-pendium “100 Myths of Mexican History.”

But the legend of the Niños Héroes is literally cast in stone, in the form of monuments at the entrance to Chapultepec Park, and Mexicans have no intention of letting go of it any time soon. The power of myth can be stronger than mere historical accu-racy, on both sides of the border.

PIT II, however, doesn’t see the Alamo legend as a harmless delusion that helps a nation feel better about itself, as the Niños Héroes concoction might be thought of. He knows that its absurd contrast between American valor and the cruelty of the swar-thy southern hordes was put to use in the service of 19th centu-ry U.S. expansionism, of which Mexico and Mexicans were early and especially unlucky victims. It functions in a similar, though less overt, manner today. Besides, it’s inaccurate, which is o"en-sive to a writer, by definition a seeker of truth.

So with “El Álamo,” Taibo wants to set the record straight. What percentage of the “Texans” fighting for “independence” from Mexico were really Texans? Was an independent Lone Star State really the ultimate goal, or was the “so-called Texas Revo-lution,” in the words of Texas writer Je" Long, in his landmark 1990 history “Duel of Eagles,” “designed only to wrench a huge chunk of Mexican territory free of Mexican control long enough for the United States to annex it”?

How did Crockett really die? Or Bowie? Did Travis really draw a line in the sand? Did the battle have any significant e"ect on the war’s outcome? Was the Mexican death toll as dispropor-tionately high as we are told? How much of a motive was slave ownership, which was practiced by the Anglo colonists in Tex-as, though illegal under Mexican law?

FOR OBVIOUS REASONS, the Alamo legend has never caught on in Mexico. Paco Ignacio Taibo II wants to make sure the true story does. BY KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT


life&leisure BOOKS

PIT II goes about addressing those questions and others in his usual crisp, conversational voice. He doesn’t use the in-vogue fictional style of relating the past as though it were a novel; he writes straight history, with commentary and a lot of detail, like who had what kind of rifle, what its range was and where it came from.

And he’s clear about his mission. “The only reason to write this book … is to bring

this disturbing story to Spanish-language readers,” he says.

That doesn’t bode well for a future Eng-lish translation. Which is a shame, since what Taibo brings to the party more than anything else is a perspective not usually available to U.S. readers.

The cost of that perspective is an occa-sional dose of overheated rhetoric, such as the back-cover excerpt citing the Alamo myth’s role in “focusing the black heart of

the North American empire.” But PIT II is also capable of wry understatement, such as his response to the laughably over-the-top claim on the Alamo Memorial’s web site that without the battle of the Alamo, there would be no Texas, the U.S. would never have become a global power, “and the world as we see it now would not exist.” Taibo: “And they say this with self-con-gratulation, not thinking that the ‘world as we see it now’ is not an especially pleasant image for millions of Latin Americans.”

PIT II saves the bulk of his contempt for the big and small screen portrayals of the events surrounding the battle of the Alamo. (The sub-title of “El Álamo” translates to “A Story Unfit for Holly-wood.”) There have been more than 20 films made about the Alamo, he tells us. But when we talk about Hollywood and the Alamo, any American baby boom-er worth his coonskin cap knows that we’re mainly talking about Walt Dis-ney’s 1950s television miniseries “Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier” and the 1960 movie “The Alamo,” di-rected by and starring John Wayne.

PIT II zeroes in on the words to a song at the end of the film: “They fought to give us liberty. That’s all we need to know.” Nothing, he says, could be farther from the truth. “We need to know much more.”

Well, yes, we do, if we only get our histo-ry from movies. But that’s a losing proposi-tion, no matter how good the costumes are. It’s especially pointless with that version of “The Alamo.” Whatever virtues Wayne may have had, he was a political extremist who made an overtly propagandistic and historically ridiculous movie.

But it was much-loved and still seen by many as a classic. People, after all, don’t go to the movies to brush up on their history. If they read, they turn to history books for that.

Dealing as he is with the overwhelm-ing pervasiveness of false versions of the events at the Alamo in the 1830s, Taibo doesn’t always make it clear that, for the most part, modern American historians are not the problem but part of the solu-tion. He obviously knows this, since the vast majority of works he cites to make his case are by American authors. And he goes out of his way to praise some of them – Je" Long, William Davis and Stephen Hardin, among others. He has joined them now in the cause of putting an end to the myths that divide us.


life&leisure BOOKS

If That Doesn’t Take the Prize

Sealtiel Alatriste: The curse of the prize

If you want to hold onto a literary prize in Mexico, you may want to stay on the good side of Gabriel Zaid. It’s also advisable to avoid lifting text

wholesale from other sources.Mexican men and women of letters

seem to enjoy giving each other awards, and there are at least a dozen prizes that matter a great deal in the Spanish-language literary world. One is the Premio Xavier Villaurrutia, named for the revered poet and playwright of the first half of the 20th century, and awarded annually to one or more Latin American writers published in Mexico.

In January, Conaculta and INBA, the two public arts agencies that administer the prize, congratulated a pair of Mexican writers for being named the latest Villaur-rutia recipients. One was Felipe Garrido, a 69-year-old Guadalajara-born essayist, critic and member of the prestigious Mex-ican Academy of Language.

The other was Sealtiel Alatriste, 62, a novelist, essayist and the coordinator of the National Autonomous University of Mex-ico’s Cultural Dissemination department, controlling most of a 2.4 billion-peso bud-get. INBA (the National Fine Arts Institute) praised Alatriste for “addressing the same subject from two di"erent angles in an orig-inal and novel way, and with clear writing.”

The two announced winners have at least one thing in common: Few in the gen-eral population have heard of either of them. That’s hardly unique in the literary prize game. Most Mexican authors are academ-ics, and most Mexican academics write for other Mexican academics. It’s a closed soci-ety that only a handful stray from.

The usual sequence of events would be for the honorees to receive the congratula-tions of their peers, grant interviews to me-dia outlets that otherwise would pay little at-tention to them, accept the award at a stu"y a"air in the Manuel Ponce auditorium of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, give a speech, party some and then go on much as before.

Not this time, though. Gabriel Zaid is a poet, critic, essayist and

academic journalist whose work appears regularly in the historian Enrique Krauze’s monthly magazine Letras Libres, a direct descendent of Octavio Paz’s Vuelta. He too is a member of the Mexican Academy of Language, as well as a former Villaurrutia winner himself. In his late 70s, Zaid is one of Mexico’s most influential public intellec-tuals, a remarkable achievement given that he almost never appears in public.

Within hours of the announcement of Alatriste’s award, Zaid published a frank blog entry blasting the choice. His im-plication was that Alatriste is a literary

lightweight unworthy of the prize. His di-rect accusation was that the awards pro-cess had been “colonized” by UNAM, the National Autonomous University of Mexi-co, which imposed one of its own on the se-lection committee.

The implication is an opinion and the accusation is hard to prove. But they came from Gabriel Zaid, so Alatriste surely knew at the outset that they wouldn’t be ignored.

The other shoe soon dropped. Zaid, along with Guillermo Sheridan, also a Letras Li-bres contributor (and member of its Ed-itorial Board), and also a former Villaur-rutia winner, bluntly accused Alatriste of serial plagiarism. They produced several examples of large chunks of prose in texts by Alatriste that were identical, word for word, with material published previously by others.

Immediately, and throughout February, newspapers covered the plagiarism scan-dal instead of running the usual fawning in-terviews with the honoree. Alatriste, who could have been enjoying the peak moment of his career, found himself in damage-con-trol mode. He couldn’t deny that he lifted text, but he did try to downplay it. He point-ed out, probably correctly, that the bor-rowings were minor and incidental to the thrust of the pieces in which they appeared. He was perhaps sloppy, but not larcenous.

And, he wrote later, his only real trans-gression was not having put the borrowed text in quotes, or cited its source. A le-gitimate point, perhaps, but it comes o" sounding like a shoplifter who insists he didn’t steal but merely neglected to pay.

Sealtiel Alatriste was outmatched. A month after he won the Villaurrutia, he publicly refused it. He also stepped down from his UNAM post. Zaid took a victory lap in the March issue of Letras Libres, call-ing for honesty, integrity and good faith in the field of letters. Of Alatriste he wrote, “Prudence dictates that a high function-ary who is not considered a great writer, and is a known plagiarizer, should not be elevated to the level of Paz, Rulfo and oth-ers with such a prestigious prize.”

On March 27, Felipe Garrido was sched-uled to receive the Premio Xavier Villaurru-tia in the Manuel Ponce room, alone. Unlike his would-be co-recipient, he would wake up on the 28th with his career on the rise, his reputation intact and his CV a little shin-ier. But more people in the general popula-tion have now heard of Sealtiel Alatriste.

—KELLY ARTHUR GARRETT


¡Pleybol! Echoes Around

BallparksTHE MEXICAN LEAGUE anticipates an entertaining season as the Tigres and Diablos are poised to reprise their finals clash.TEXT & PHOTOS BY TOM BUCKLEY

The Diablos Rojos once again awarded 40-year-old lefty Roberto “Machine Gun” Ramírez with the Opening Day start against the rival Tigres on March 16.


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The sell-out crowd at Estadio Beto Ávila in Cancún roared its ap-proval as the Tigres of Quintana Roo com-memorated their 2011 championship in front

of the home fans on March 16.In the visiting dugout as witnesses

were the Tigres’ bitter rivals, the Diab-los Rojos, making the celebration all the sweeter, especially since the Tigres swept the Diablos Rojos in the championship se-ries last September.

The Mexican Baseball League (LMB) could not have invented a better way to start the 2012 season. The atmosphere in Cancún was festive and raucous, typical of baseball’s so-called “Guerra Civil.” The misnomer dates back to the days when the two clubs shared the old Social Security Stadium in Mexico City before the Tigres left for Puebla in 2002, then moving to the beach resort in 2007.

The two teams boast 25 league titles be-tween them and the old rivals are favored to meet once again in the finals. Of course, the other 14 teams across Mexico will have something to say about that, with the Mon-terrey Sultanes and Puebla Pericos poised to launch challenges this summer.

This year, the LMB is eager to build on last year’s positive attendance figures. Ticket sales were up 30 percent over 2010 numbers.

STIRRING UP EXCITEMENTThe LMB turns 88 this season and league o!cials were looking forward to a success-ful year on the field and o".

For the first time ever, the league host-ed a public launch party at Mexico City’s Monument to the Revolution on March 8. Mascots from each team entertained the crowd while league brass mingled with City Hall o!cials in a celebration of the “King of Sports.”

The event was televised on TVC De-portes as the league presented details of the many promotional campaigns it will be sponsoring, including its goal of supplying 16,000 youngsters with eye care and glasses.

Each team was also represented on the stage by one star player as Mayor Marce-lo Ebrard ended the brief presentations by delivering a rousing speech. After the dignitaries climbed down, the meren-gue group Merenglass took the stage for a mini-concert.

The following week, each team submit-ted final rosters to the league and prepared for Opening Day weekend. Each of the 16

teams held splashy press conferences to announce their rosters and, in some cases, present new managers. In Mexico City on March 14, Diablos Rojos executives talked to reporters, hyping the potential of young-sters brought up from the farm team and explaining why 2011 LMB MVP Luis Ter-rero was not retained.

Similar exchanges took place across Mexico as the new season’s approach fed dreams of glory. Baseball fans are looking forward to five months of entertainment, with the May 18-20 All-Star Weekend in Monterrey poised to be the midseason centerpiece.

NEW RULES IMPACT ROSTERSSome league bylaws were tweaked for the 2012 season. This year, each team is per-mitted to include five foreign players on its roster, up from four a year ago.

Each team must also have at least one rookie on the roster with specific partic-ipation requirements established. If the rookie is a pitcher, he must throw at least 40 innings during the 113-game season. If the rookie is a position player, he must get at least 80 at-bats.

The definition of a rookie was also defined: a rookie pitcher must not have

Fans lined up for tickets on Opening Day at Puebla’s Estadio Hermanos Serdán on March 18 to see their beloved Pericos take on the Oaxaca Guerreros.


thrown 25 innings in 2011 and is not con-sidered a rookie if he was on an LMB ros-ter during parts of two previous seasons; a rookie player must not have had 50 at-bats in the LMB nor been on a roster during any two previous seasons. Also, if a player has been on a roster of any professional team in the United States – minor league or Ma-jor League – he is not considered a rook-ie in the LMB.

The league also announced that nine players were nailed with 50-game sus-pensions for failing anti-doping tests dur-ing the preseason. Among the suspended players was Diablos Rojos outfielder Alex-is Gómez, a Dominican who has played in the Major Leagues with the Kansas City Royals and the Detroit Tigers.

League president Plinio Escalante also confirmed that former American League MVP José Canseco would not be allowed to play for the Quintana Roo Tigres after he declined to take a blood test. Canseco, 47, had played well during spring train-ing, but told doctors that he was on a regi-men of testosterone as a result of years of steroid abuse. However, because Canseco was unable to provide a league-approved prescription supporting his claim, Es-calante was left with no choice but to ban Canseco, the 1988 AL MVP while with the Oakland A’s.

Escalante also had to address ques-tions about security after the March 13 in-cident in which Coahuila police engaged in a shoot-out with four heavily armed men in the parking lot outside a baseball game involving the Saltillo Saraperos. Newspa-pers throughout the Americas featured photos of players and fans ducking for cov-er in the stands and in the dugout.

“This was an unfortunate incident that did not have anything directly to do

This little tyke waits for customers at his father’s souvenir stand outside Puebla’s Estadio Hermanos Serdán.

with baseball,” Escalante told reporters in Mexico City. “This will not interrupt the season in any way and we are grateful that no fans were hurt in the incident.”

DOMINANT FORCE IN NORTHThe Diablos Rojos boasted the league’s best record in 2011 (63-40) and avoid-ed the post-season collapses that have plagued them in recent years. Until the championship series that is, where the Tigres swept the Diablos without break-ing a sweat.

Mexico City fans demand nothing short of the club’s 16th title this season and new manager Eddy Díaz is tasked with leading the Diablos to the Promised Land.

Gone is MVP Terrero after he nearly won the Triple Crown last year (.390, 38 HR, 110 RBI), but back in the fold is third baseman Óscar Robles. A former Dodger and Padre, Robles missed last season with knee surgery.

John Rodriguez – a member of the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals World Series champions – was brought in to be the des-ignated hitter. Line-drive machine Japhet Amador (.376, 25 HR, 84 RBI) is back at first base and second baseman Carlos Va-lencia (.303, 21 HR, 82 RBI) is expected to contribute at the plate too.

The Diablos led the league in hitting last season (.334) but pitching was their Achilles’ heel, primarily due to injuries. This season, the Diablos starters include

veteran Julio Mateo (formerly with the Se-attle Mariners) coming back from shoul-der surgery and Rolando Valdéz, acquired in a trade with Oaxaca. Graybeard south-paw Roberto Ramírez, 40, is also expect-ed to chew up some innings.

LIKELY CHALLENGERSThe Monterrey Sultanes and Reynosa Broncos are expected to be the main rivals in the North Division and Puebla features new manager Julio Franco, the long-time Major Leaguer who played in the Mexican League in 1999 and 2001.

The Sultanes are banking on the re-turn of one-time Los Angeles Dodger pros-pect Karim García. After a 10-year Ma-jor League career, García knocked around South Korea and Japan before signing with Monterrey before last season. Half way through the year, García walked away over a dispute with club management. The slugging outfielder is back this season and insists there are no hard feelings with Sul-tanes GM Roberto Magdaleno.

Cuban first baseman Michel Abreu (.339, 21 HR, 82 RBI with Tabasco) is slat-ed to step into the clean-up spot, ahead of García and outfielder Edgar Quintero (.357, 32 HR, 78 RBI) in the line-up.

Former San Diego Padre Walter Silva (10-4, 3.51) heads the pitching rotation alongside Juan Delgadillo.

Reynosa manager Homar Rojas, a former catcher, usually produces a solid


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pitching sta". This year, he’ll have 2011 ERA champ Marco Tovar (3.11) and the league’s Pitcher of the Year at the top of his rotation.

Outfielder Eduardo Arredondo (.346) will try to set the table for the middle of the line-up featuring catcher Adán Muñoz (.304, 20 HR) and 1999 College World Se-ries hero Marshall MacDougall (.327, 15 HR, 79 RBI).

Puebla’s Franco makes his debut as a manager hoping to revive the Pericos’ for-tunes. After reaching the finals in 2010, Puebla stumbled in 2011, finishing last season with a 53-53 record and first-round elimination in the playo"s.

Outfielder Serafin Rodríguez (.344) leads the Puebla hits brigade and first baseman Mendy López (.321, 31 HR, 106 RBI) is the run producer. Andrés Meza11-5, 3.14) is the sta" ace.

Saltillo won the league crown in 2009 and 2010 but failed to make the playo"s in 2011 (44-60) so the Saraperos are eager to atone for last year’s stumbles. Saltillo’s pitch-ing was atrocious last season (6.13 ERA).

The North Division also features the reappearance of a franchise in Aguas-calientes. Champions in 1978, the Riele-ros folded four years ago. In early Novem-ber, league o!cials approved the move of the Chihuahua Dorados to Aguascalien-tes, the third time in history that the Ri-eleros have been a part of the LMB.

The Monclova Acereros and Laguna Vaqueros round out the North Division.

TIGRES SET TO ROAR IN SOUTHBaseball purists surely fell in love with the Tigres of 2011.

The Quintana Roo club played defense slickly, boasting two Gold Glove winners (second baseman Carlos Gastelúm and outfielder Douglas Clark). The Tigres al-so led the league in shutouts (9) and had the league’s best bullpen headed by saves leader Sandy Nin (24). And Pablo Ortega hurled a no-hitter in addition to being a solid starter all season (10-3, 3.29).

Skipper Matías Carrillo has made a smooth transition after 20 very pro-ductive years in the Tigres’ outfield. He seemed to make all the right moves last season as pinch hitters came up with time-ly production.

The Tigres can expect three South Di-vision clubs to chase them from the begin-ning – Campeche, Oaxaca and Yucatán – but otherwise Quintana Roo should face little resistance.

The Campeche Piratas typically re-ly on solid starting pitching and 2011 should be no di"erent. Francisco Cam-pos (12-5, 3.42) is still a No. 1 starter while Alejandro Armenta (11-4, 3.80) and Nick Singleton are expected to be reliable on the hill.

At the plate, center fielder Rubén Ri-vera – infamous for stealing Derek Jeter’s bat from the clubhouse and selling it to a collector while a member of the Yan-kees – will hit third. Behind him will be Wes Bankston, a former Oakland A’s first baseman and long-time clutch hit-ter Jesús Robles.

NEW BLOOD FOR GUERREROS Jesús Sommers will take over as Oaxa-ca manager and his Guerreros hope 2011 batting champ Bárbaro Cañizares (.396) picks up where he left o". Former Major Leaguer Gerónimo Gil will handle first base after a trade brought him over from the Diablos Rojos.

Pitching is untested except for Jorge Luis Castillo (he twirled a no-hitter on the season’s first weekend last year) and Som-mers will likely have to rely on his bullpen and youngsters from the farm system. For that reason, the top of the Guerreros order – Alex González and Luis Figueroa – must consistently get on base.

The Yucatán Leones might benefit from the name recognition of first base-man Fernando Valenzuela, Jr., but Rubén Valdez and Alejandro Rivero will be called upon to make a di"erence at the plate.

From the mound, Oscar Rivera will point the way. He led the league in com-plete games last season and the Leones hope youngsters Luis Rodríguez, Os-car Verdugo and Linder Castro develop quickly.

The Ciudad del Carmen Delfines are the new faces in the South. Ownership acquired the franchise from Nuevo Lar-edo. The manager will be long-time Ma-jor League shortstop Félix Fermín.

Veracruz reached the South Division fi-nals last season behind the league’s best ERA but manager Danny Fernández was not brought back and the roster has under-gone considerable upheaval.

The Tabasco Olmecas lost slugger Mi-chel Abreu but they still have ace Leon-ardo González (12-5, 3.96) at the front of their rotation. The Minatitlán Petroleros have first baseman Carlos Rivera (.316) and little else.

Mascots representing all 16 Mexican League teams arrive at Mexico City’s Monument to the Revolution on March 8 to entertain fans who showed up for the first-ever public launch party.


EVALUATE THIS!Two of the reasons for the sorry state of education in Mexico, according to “¡De Panzazo!,” the much-talked-about propaganda documentary advocating education reform, are teacher absenteeism and teacher resistance to performance evaluations. The teachers objected to the accusations, and then promptly abandoned their classrooms in several states and took to the streets of Mexico City in mid-March to protest plans to implement … performance evaluations.

Protest strategy in Mexico is mostly about disruption and confrontation, and the CNTE, a dissident teachers’ union that exists in parallel with Elba Esther Gordillo’s SNTE, is a master at both. Classrooms were empty (pictured below in an outtake from the documentary), and traffic was snarled in and around the capital’s Historic Center in the days leading up to a holiday weekend (Benito Juárez’s birthday).

Perhaps thanks to “¡De Panzazo!,” perhaps from sheer exhaustion, there are signs that public impatience with the renegade teachers is reaching a tipping point. As Anel Guadalupe Montero Díaz, a pro-teacher blogger, put it, “Whoever said that hijacking Mexico City by creating traffic chaos would give the teachers’ cause strength and legitimacy? … How can teachers possibly restore their rights by suspending classes in a clear violation of the rights of the most vulnerable among us, the children?”

Backlash or not, the next generation appears set to continue the teachers’ union’s aggressive anti-reform tactics. During that same week in March, students at the state of Michoacán’s Escuela Normal Vasco de Quiroga, a teachers training college, hijacked at least 27 buses and held the drivers captive for days. Bus service to and from Michoacán was suspended as the future teachers demanded more scholarships, more matriculation and more positions available upon graduation. Another accusation in “¡De Panzazo!” is that teaching jobs are too often obtained by cronyism, union pressure or outright purchase, and too seldom by merit.

PARDON ME, BOY, IS THAT THE CUAUHTÉMOC CHOO CHOO?Hidalgo, Zapata, Allende, Pino Suárez, Lázaro Cárdenas. There’s nothing unusual about stations in Mexico City’s immense Metro transit system being named after historical icons, the kind every school child knows about. But the vehicles themselves? They too will carry the names of prominent figures, at least the 38 or so trains that will traverse the southern part of the city on the new Line 12.

The initial honoree, announced March 15, is none other than Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the aforementioned Lázaro, three-time presidential candidate, and the first elected mayor of Mexico City. Cárdenas, who will turn 78 on May 1, right about the time the new Metro line is expected to start operations, took the train that bears his name for a short, and reportedly very slow, test drive (pictured above). All seemed to go well. The city will name the remaining trains (one per week, for maximum PR effect) over the next several months.

AND THEY SAY CRICKET MATCHES ARE LONG …Like one of her conservative counterparts in the United States, former

Education Secretary Josefina Vázquez Mota found herself delivering

a major address to a mostly empty stadium on the day she officially

registered as the candidate for president of the center-right National

Action Party. But the circumstances were different than Mitt

Romney’s folly in Detroit.

Vázquez Mota’s team actually had the 36,000-seat Estadio Azul

(home of the Cruz Azul soccer team) nice and full fairly early in the

morning, having bused in supporters from some 15 states. But then,

as they say, mistakes were made. They decided to go with a 12 noon

start. The candidate herself didn’t arrive until 12:30, even though her

campaign headquarters is just a few blocks from the stadium. When

the event finally kicked off at 12:52, several previously scheduled

speakers were, inexplicably, allowed to go ahead and give their

planned talks. By the time the candidate got to the microphone at

1:20 in the afternoon, the spectators, many of whom had been sitting

in the sun since 9 a.m., had wandered away.

It turned out the speech that Vázquez Mota ended up giving was

a recycled one. And the headlines the next day were not about the

first-ever official female presidential candidate for a major party. They

were about a near-empty stadium.


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FANTASTIC PHONIESAlebrijes, the brightly colored hand-crafted sculptures of fantastical animal-like beings, have only been around for about a century, but they’re high in the hierarchy of Mexican folk art favorites. Perhaps helped along by the past attention they’ve received from the likes of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Nelson Rockefeller and the Rolling Stones, authentic alebrijes can fetch as much as 20,000 pesos (about $1,600), are popular with residents and tourists alike, and in October turn Mexico City’s broadest avenue, Paseo de la Reforma, into a sort of imaginary bestiary as oversized alebrijes parade down the street in an annual event organized by the Museo de Arte Popular (pictured here).

Properly speaking, true alebrijes are those made in Mexico City, descended from the work of Pedro Linares, inventor of the art form and coiner of the name, which his family claims. Those made in Oaxaca are supposed to be called Tonas de Oaxaca. In casual use, though, they’re all alebrijes.

The problem isn’t nomenclature; it’s the cheap, mass-produced knockoffs that have insinuated themselves into the lucrative market like an invasive species. Concerned, the Oaxacan Crafts Institute recently petitioned industrial product protection agency (IMPI) to grant Geographical Indication status (Denominación de Origen) to Oaxaca’s tonas, meaning that if they’re not made in certain parts of the state of Oaxaca, and according to certain traditions, then they’re not tonas.

What’s the difference? Authentic alebrijes are made of copal wood or a close relative. The fake ones: clay or porcelain. Real: Natural dye for colors. Fake: Acrylics. Real: Individual handcrafted. Fake: Manufactured in series. Real: Gasoline cured and oven dried. Fake: Not. Real: Three months in the making. Fake: one week.

SHOWTIMEIf you can judge the economic health of a metropolis by its music venues, Mexico City is doing quite well, thank you. The biggest draws have been filling stadiums (the Foro Sol and on occasion the 120,000-seat Estadio Azteca), arenas (Palacio de los Deportes), the 10,000-seat National Auditorium, and various venues run by Ocesa, the nation’s top event promoter.

Now add to the mix two major new projects. The Arena Ciudad de México is an ambitious 20,000-seat mega-venue with luxury boxes and (a rarity in the megalopolis) plenty of parking. Its inaugural shows in late February featured Luis Miguel, the crooning heartthrob of middle-aged housewives, followed by Carlos Santana, Yanni and (soon) Jane’s Addiction, Il Volo and Scorpions.

Next up is the cozier but equally ultra-modern Pepsi Center WTC, a 7,500-seater built inside the massive World Trade Center. The WTC was conceived as a mega-hotel in the 1960s, but by the time it opened its doors in 1995, it consisted of an office complex and convention center. It now includes the Pepsi Center, which will open to the public in May. Highlight: A rare Mexico appearance by Bob Dylan in May.

THE TOWER TO NOWHEREThe Estela de Luz can’t catch a break. It was supposed to be a lasting monument to the spirit of the nation’s Bicentennial and a legacy of the Calderón administration, but by the time the Pillar of Light was inaugurated in January, it was almost a year and a half late (the Bicentennial was celebrated in September of 2010), over-budget (costing 1.36 billion pesos … so far), under investigation (for procedural irregularities) and decidedly under-appreciated.

Now there’s another subject of conversation: you can’t see it very well. From almost anywhere. The quartz panels are on the north and south side of a 341-foot tower that rises from an east-west avenue, Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma. So what most people see looks more like a stray section of infrastructure from the nearby skyscrapers in progress.

If they see it at all. Architects and urbanists take constant shots at the monument’s design, orientation and location. But the most stinging rebuke may have come from Carlos Fuentes, the author who actually is what the Estela de Luz was meant to be – a Mexican icon. “The monument doesn’t make any sense to me,” Fuentes said. “It’s surrounded by buildings taller than it is, and you can’t even see it.”

Maybe that’s a good thing. Fuentes: “It’s so ugly that I’ve never even gone near it.” Ouch.


FERIA DE SAN MARCOS April 14-May 6 in Aguascalientes, AguascalientesIf Mexico had a true national fair, this one in the San Marcos barrio of the city of Aguascalientes, in the state of the same name, would be it. Celebrants flock in from across the country, and from abroad. There will be a ton of cultural events and amusement rides, but the emphasis is also on the traditional – including bullfights, cockfights, charro-style equestrian events and, of course, food.

EXPO JOYA GUADALAJARA April 17-19 in Guadalajara, Jalisco Billed as Latin America’s most important trade fair for gold, silver, and jewelry of all kinds, including watches and jewelry supplies. It’s primarily an industry fair for professionals, attracting buyers and sellers from all over the world, but it’s also valuable for learning more about the jewelry industry, and for those considering starting their own business.

ZONA MACO 2012 April 18-22 in Mexico CityThis is a huge international contemporary art exhibit organized by the Mexico City government, with selected pieces by more than 900 artists from more than 90 galleries worldwide. It takes place at the spacious Centro Banamex.

INTERNATIONAL MOLE FESTIVAL May 2-3, Puebla, PueblaCalling all foodies: The inaugural International Mole Festival – part of the o!cial festivities commemorating the 150th anniversary of Cinco de Mayo – brings international, national and regional chefs to the Puebla capital to discuss mole and Poblano cuisine’s influence on Mexican and global gastronomy. There will be expert talks, a crafts fair, demonstrations by third-generation moleras, and mole tastings. It all takes place at the William O. Jenkins Convention Center, Bulevar Héroes del 5 de Mayo #402, in Puebla’s Centro Histórico.

FESTIVAL DE MÉXICO May 2-20 Mexico CityPatti Smith leads the musical line-up for this year’s edition of Mexico City’s premier cultural festival. There will also be opera, theater, dance, literary presentations, children’s events and much more.

G-20 SUMMIT June 18-19 in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur Heads of state and other top government figures from the 20 biggest economies – including Mexico, the United States and the European Union – will take over the Baja Peninsula resort area of Los Cabos for the annual G-20 Summit meeting, with President Calderón wielding the gavel. A 653,400-square-foot, solar panel-equipped convention center is under construction to house the sessions, though there is doubt that it will be ready in time. Some 11,000 of the 13,000 available rooms in the area have been set aside for summit attendees.

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