I’ve lived in Iztapalapa—Mexico City’s most populous borough, with over 1.8 million inhabitants—for the last 26 years. The borough is considered part of the “periphery” of Mexico City, areas of the metropolis that are both politically and economically marginalized. It has a hilly, dense urban landscape that isn’t one of skyscrapers, but of unfinished, self-built homes. Most are gray, the color of the blocks they are made of; others have painted facades that are showing their wear. Inside, taps go months or years without running water, meaning that most inhabitants have to wait for tanker trucks to bring it in.

Another of the everyday ways that people living here experience our marginalization is in the question of transport. Residents who live beyond the end of the city’s metro system have to rely on a convoluted network of micro-buses, paying higher fares the farther away they live. For most of my life, traveling the six-and-a-half miles from Metro Constitución, at the end of the green line, to my neighborhood of Santa Marta took 90 minutes—and everyone knew the threat of getting mugged on the bus was high.

Then, three years ago, things changed radically. Now, every day, I and 70,000 others travel those densely and chaotically urbanized miles in 35 to 40 minutes, 100 feet in the air, at the cost of 7 pesos—the equivalent of 40 cents—and without the threat of being robbed. What changed? In 2021, the city introduced a novel form of transportation: the Cablebús, a public gondola system.

In 2021, Cablebús Line 2 earned the Guinness World Record for being the globe’s longest cable-car line used for public transportation. As a frequent user of Line 2, what I enjoy the most is the view. Iztapalapa has many hills and mountains, including the Cerro de las Minas (which has been gradually eaten away as its volcanic rocks have been extracted for construction material), the Sierra de Santa Catarina, and the Cerro de la Estrella, an important ceremonial site in the pre-Hispanic era. Between the Torres de Buenavista and Xalapa stations, the ascending ground below you makes it seem like the gondola might brush against the roofs of the houses. As you travel, the wind enters the cabins, brushing your cheeks and occasionally seeming to make the steel cables run faster.

One of the more than 900 murals painted below Line 2 of the Mexico City Cablebús. The line, which opened in 2021, has transformed the way tens of thousands of residents of the dense Iztapalapa borough move around their neighborhood. Photo courtesy of Blake Reyes

At first, not everyone was in favor of the Cablebús. When Line 2 was inaugurated, people who lived along the route protested. They felt it invaded their privacy, since their rooftops were visible from the gondolas. In response, the borough government suggested painting murals on the rooftops along the route, so that the passers-by would have something to look at, and residents would have a work of art instead of just a place to hang their laundry, and to store their water tanks and old appliances.

Since Line 2 opened, artists have painted more than 900 murals along its trajectory, composing what the borough government says is the largest urban mural project in the world. Known as the Iztapalapa Mural, it features portraits of characters from movies; of important figures from Mexico’s cultural, scientific, and technological realms; of local residents known for their commitment to the community;  and of animals like Frida, a search and rescue dog who became famous after the deadly 2017 earthquake for her work finding victims.

In many of the neighborhoods it serves, the Cablebús has transformed public spaces, making them safer and more communal. An example is the Desarrollo Urbano Quetzalcóatl area, formerly known for being among the most dangerous in the city—in 2019, the government even deployed the National Guard there in an attempt to reduce crime.  There used to be an unsafe market, with stores made of sheet metal and cardboard, where the neighborhood’s Cablebús station is now located. Today, alongside the new station, the market has been turned into a colorful, mural-covered place with eateries for Cablebús commuters. Once, fear of crime kept people away from the market after dark; today, they take photos of the murals and attend cultural and sporting events nearby. People feel—and are—safer.

These changes have brought tourism to the barrio. In the past, Iztapalapa wasn’t a place outsiders would visit—on the contrary, they usually avoided it. Now, it’s common for both Mexican and foreign tourists to ride Line 2 gondolas on the weekends. Guides specialize in teaching the history of Iztapalapa from above, utilizing the Cablebús route. I took two guided walks with Beatriz Ramírez, a crónista—local historian—and the coordinator of the borough’s archive. She brought historical images along during our trip to show how the hills of Iztapalapa have changed over time, taken over by the sprawl of the city.

Yet there are also tourist agencies that are less embedded in Iztapalapa’s culture and history. One tour offered on TripAdvisor, called “Fly over CDMX by Cable Car,” advertises itself as a way for foreigners to explore “a part of Mexico City that most tourists miss.” The company charges $42 per person—one hundred times the cost of a Cablebús ticket. This type of tourism benefits tour companies and the platforms they use to sell their excursions, but few benefits reach local residents. I worry that they offer a superficial vision of the place that exoticizes members of my community, turning us into something to be ogled. One such excursion, for the price of approximately $180, brings tourists from some of the wealthiest to the most marginalized neighborhoods in Mexico City, offering the opportunity to “see how different they are” and “feel the magic of the enormous metropolis.” But sustainable, community-focused tourism requires understanding, not just observation, and exchange, not just extraction.

In 2021, when Carlos Tapia Rojas, the Guinness World Records’ Latin America judge, recognized Line 2 as record-breaking, he told Iztapalapa residents, “¡Felicitaciones! Ahora son… Oficialmente, asombrosos.” Congratulations, he told us, we were officially amazing.

As a resident of Iztapalapa and a Cablebús user, I can say unequivocally that the Line 2 has changed our quality of life, along with the way we perceive our surroundings, for the better.

It’s also become clear that the negative impacts of the new form of transit are not in the intrusion of stations and poles into neighborhoods, nor even that onlookers might see you hanging out your laundry on your messy roof. They’re in the potential impact of being officially amazing. When you come to Iztapalapa to ride our gondola, seek out guides like Beatriz, who are real crónistas of the area, who are dedicated to sharing our culture and history, not just selling it. They’re the ones who can teach you what life is really like in Iztapalapa.

The post Riding the Cablebús Over Mexico City appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The biggest elections in Mexican history will take place on June 2. Citizens will vote to fill more than 20,000 offices: electing a new president and governors from eight of our 32 states, filling the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (the equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives), and installing a new head of government for Mexico City and thousands of other communities.

If that sounds hectic, it’s because it is. In Mexico City, braving a month-long heatwave, literal tons of political propaganda litter the streets. Every free wall, pedestrian bridge, and lamp post has been overtaken by multicolor plastic signs and candidates’ smiling faces. Plastered one on top of the other, most end up crumbled, half ripped, or destroyed. Clara Brugada and Santiago Taboada, political rivals running for head of government in Mexico City, have denounced each other’s teams for taking down the propaganda. It gets put back up within days.

Despite the posters’ bright colors, these contests can only be described as gray—the opposite of exciting. Rather than being about the future, they’re stuck in the past.

In México, people often see the president as a villain. Things seemed different when the leftist Morena party leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador ran for the office in 2018. As Mexico City’s mayor from 2000 to 2005, López Obrador expanded the Periférico, the city’s biggest urban highway; renovated the city center; provided government pensions for citizens 70 and over; inaugurated the Metrobús system; and stood up to President Vicente Fox.

Despite a prominent bribery scandal, López Obrador positioned himself as an outsider, speaking often about fighting the Mexican power mafia, politicians and businessmen who acted against the true interests of Mexico. López Obrador lost in 2006—by a mere 0.56%—and again in 2012. During these years he traveled the country calling himself the “legitimate president” who had won the 2006 election. In 2018, he won a decisive victory, defeating his runner up by 31 percentage points, and becoming Mexico’s first “president of the people,” as he would put it. He launched a daily, two-to-three-hour 7:00 a.m. press conference called the “Mañanera,” in order to speak to his people. He opened the Mexican White House to the public as a museum.

Many Mexicans believed that perhaps this man would be the change the country needed, after enduring decades of corruption and scandal. On Sunday July 1, when López Obrador’s victory was announced, hundreds of thousands gathered in Mexico City’s Zócalo, or main square, in a moment of joy, hope, and catharsis. I went there with my mother; she was truly happy, because she had supported him for years and thought it would never be possible for him to win. That day, in front of the roaring crowd, López Obrador hugged himself as if he were hugging all of us and said, “I love you.”

López Obrador named his movement “La Cuarta Transformación,” or the Fourth Transformation, suggesting his presidency would mark a historic shift comparable to the Mexican Revolution of 1910—an era of “Primero los pobres,” where the poor come first.

Reality has failed to meet expectations. The president promised to combat elite private sector interests, but promoted a model of austerity and reduced public spending that erased dozens of government programs in favor of a model of direct monthly payments for some disadvantaged groups. These payments, made by bank transfer, have been denounced for irregularities, and for being used as a way to condition voting, and have only increased private sector power. Some 30 million Mexicans lost access to health care.

López Obrador leaned into divisive, authoritarian, populist rhetoric. He also instituted changes to the police and military that made Mexicans less safe. In many states today, including Michoacán, Zacatecas, and Guanajuato, organized crime factions force residents in mining, transport, or agriculture to pay a fee just to do their work. In the country there is a crisis of over 300,000 internally displaced persons that have relocated due to violence.

Almost six years have gone by, and López Obrador is facing the end of his term. Many people are pleased with the monthly payments; salaries have increased, too. For many Mexican voters, the president still represents a moral alternative over politicians from traditional parties. He was, they say, chosen by the people.

But for the rest of us, the mood is no longer joyful—just skeptical. These elections have involved a huge outpouring of resources. They have been loud. Cars drive through the streets with boomboxes announcing the names of the candidates. Politicians dress in the colors of their parties (phosphorescent orange from head to toe for the Movimiento Ciudadano party). It’s like being at a carnival—noisy, colorful, unserious—and on social media the frenzy is even more intense: You can see videos of candidates dancing and giving away Cheetos with their faces stamped on the packages.

The flashiness is not accidental. Money is the driving force behind these elections. It is the criterion for selecting local candidates, who pay a fee to run for office. It pours out to thousands of consultants to feed the endless publicity and influence votes. Organized crime money finances campaigns and buys candidates. The whole exercise feels like a marketplace, not a forum for ideas.

The day of the election may be a chaotic one. Already, electoral violence is at an all-time high, with more than 30 candidates murdered. Mexicans expect to see the same kinds of disruptions that occurred in the midterm elections of 2021, as well as confrontations between candidates when results are close.

There’s one change that’s certain: Mexico will have its first female president. Physicist Claudia Sheinbaum, the candidate for Morena, has spent the past six years as mayor of Mexico City, and all polls suggest she’ll win. She is running against another woman, former Senator Xóchitl Gálvez, from the opposition PAN-PRI-PRD party, a conglomeration of former opponents whose uncomfortable marriage has the sole purpose of forming a unified front against Morena. Sheinbaum, López Obrador’s designated successor, has promised continuity: to defend the poor and represent the people, fight corruption, and uphold the principles of La Cuarta Transformación. But her promises are hard to believe. Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico City failed to show accountability for incidents of negligence like the collapse of a subway line in 2021 that resulted in the death of 27 passengers, reduced investment in public transportation, and failed to uphold promises to make a greener, less polluted city. She is also working within a divided, fractious party—and a movement so identified with one charismatic politician that many wonder if it can outlast its creator.

Xóchitl Gálvez, meanwhile, is inexperienced and little-known. Her candidacy reflects the traditional parties’ inability to produce strong opponents. It is as if none of the big names wanted to contend against Morena.

Idealists might say that these elections are a decision between two visions for Mexico’s future. In my mind, they are something less profound: a reaffirmation of a movement that prophesizes extraordinary morality while sadly copying previous governments’ vices. It feels as if today’s Mexican political system is run by the idea, rather than the reality, of electoral change. Through elections we can put a woman in power, an outsider in power, a different party in power; we can punish the ruling party, or the traditional parties.

Change alone is not hard. What is hard—extremely hard—is change that makes things better.

The elections are all people talk about here, but they feel like background noise to me. More competition does not necessarily translate into more democracy, or better democracy. It’s the scramble for power that truly drives Mexican politicians. Little can be said for the exercise of power itself, or if leaders care at all about what happens the day that follows the election.

The post Mexico’s Noisy, Colorful, Unserious Election appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

In 2016, the leaders of several street vendor organizations from the Mexico City neighborhood of Tepito met with local officials with a request: They wanted the capital city’s new constitution to codify their right to sell in public spaces. Street vendors like them, they argued, were an essential sector of the urban economy. In exchange for their legalization, they offered to submit to regulation and taxation.

The image of vendors gathered around a table with officials is not one most would associate with Tepito, best known as Mexico City’s barrio bravo, its fiercest neighborhood. Located only a few blocks north of the city’s historic center, Tepito is synonymous with lawlessness and illicit enterprise. Beneath the bright plastic tarps that line its streets, one can buy just about anything, from pirated DVDs to Swiss watches to exotic animals. It is also the home base of the drug-trafficking and extortion racket La Unión Tepito and its rival La Fuerza Anti-Unión, whose turf wars drove a recent surge in homicides.

Tepiteños, as the area’s residents are known, have long celebrated their autonomy. They have resisted efforts to tame the area through policing or gentrification by any means necessary. The mantra “Tepito exists because it resists” is graffitied on walls and repeated by residents. Yet Tepito perseveres not from its isolation and defensiveness, but from its powerful connections. For centuries, vendors who have labored in the gray areas of the law have forged relationships with government officials to sustain their trades. Informal markets like Tepito persist with the help of state actors—not in spite of them.

The association between Tepito and illicit commerce dates to the early 20th century, when a second-hand market called the Baratillo (derived from barato, or cheap) moved to the area. The Baratillo was a colonial-era institution originally located in the Plaza Mayor—now Zócalo—that offered clothing, tools, furniture, and books. New, used, and stolen items mixed indiscriminately with one another, blurring the lines between legality and criminality. Considering the market an eyesore and a threat to public order, colonial and national officials pushed it out of the city center. In 1902, the Baratillo settled for good in Tepito, then a poor, outlying neighborhood. It flourished. By mid-century, the market and its neighborhood had become synonymous, known collectively as Tepito.

As Mexico’s economy evolved, so too did the goods on offer in Tepito. At the beginning of the 20th century, signs of the country’s nascent industrialization—telegraph wire, pharmaceutical products, scientific instruments—began appearing alongside the piles of scrap metal and old furniture. In the 1930s, shoppers could find stolen radios, as well as marijuana. During the 1970s and ’80s, vendors began specializing in fayuca, the colloquial term for contraband goods that evaded the high tariffs and import restrictions of that era. Tepito put TVs, stereos, and sneakers within reach of Mexico City’s middle and working classes. Toward the end of the century, as Mexico opened its economy to the world, piratería—pirated, or knock-off goods—began to line Tepito’s alleys. Korean and Chinese merchants gained a particular foothold.

The latest evolution in this long retail trade, narcotrafficking, has become central to Tepito’s economy since the 1990s. The organization La Unión Tepito began as a protection racket, extracting payments from local merchants in exchange for promises of security. As drug consumption in and around Mexico City soared, La Unión turned to supplying that market. But even as La Unión worked to corner the city’s retail drug trade, it remained steeped in Tepito’s core business of piratería. By 2020, the organization dominated the market for pirated goods in the capital. It even replaced Tepito’s famed “Marco Polos,” who travel to China to procure merchandise, with its own members.

Just as drugs are simply the latest iteration of merchandise to be sold in Tepito, its vendors’ political strategies—such as the 2016 rendezvous with officials— from a long tradition of activism stretching back to the baratilleros of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As early as the 1840s, vendors published letters in Mexico’s leading newspapers defending the social and economic benefits of the Baratillo. They lobbied elected officials to prevent them from disbanding the market, meeting with city councilmen in their homes and showing up at meetings. The connections between vendors and the city’s municipal government, which relied on the rents vendors paid to sell in public streets and plazas, ran especially deep. After the Mexican Revolution and the ratification of the 1917 Constitution, vendors in Tepito and elsewhere organized in unions, establishing close ties with the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

Today, Tepito’s merchants belong to dozens of vendor organizations, each with its own political links. Vendors pay daily fees to the organizations’ leaders, who negotiate with Mexico City’s borough governments for access to street and sidewalk space. Those leaders also advocate for larger reforms, such as the clause in the 2016 city constitution codifying vendors’ right to earn a living by selling their wares in public spaces.

Criminal groups like La Unión Tepito have their own political strategies, which depend on incorporating police and government officials into their networks, or, less commonly, getting their associates appointed or elected to positions in local government. While some agents of the state end up on the payrolls of organized crime, others, especially those in elected office, benefit from less obviously corrupt alliances. The shadow economy is big business, and Tepito’s outsized importance gives its vendors and residents significant political clout.

No modern-day figure represents the thick connections between Tepito and the political arena than Sandra Cuevas, head of government of Mexico City’s central Cuauhtémoc borough. Raised in Tepito, where she worked in her parents’ appliance business, her governing style bears much in common with Tepito’s own personality. Deemed “ungovernable” by the newspaper El País, Cuevas has reveled in her defiance of just about everybody throughout her political career. She sparred continuously with former Mexico City mayor and now presidential candidate Claudia Sheinbaum. She has refused to back down from unpopular decisions, such as whitewashing the hand-painted rótulos on vendors’ kiosks that color Mexico City’s streetscapes and ordering some of the city’s beloved street art painted over—including murals in Tepito.

Cuevas rose to one of the highest elected offices in Mexico City with support from Tepito’s vendor organizations. She promised that she would stop the extortions from criminal groups that saddle them with payments of up to 250 pesos per day—though people claiming to act on her behalf and members of her own family have been accused of demanding such payments themselves. There are also rumors, which Cuevas denies, that she has links to La Unión.

The ascent of both Cuevas and La Unión attest to a key aspect of Tepito’s enduring power: the symbiosis between extralegal commerce, in all its forms, and the Mexican state. Though Tepito may be shorthand for lawlessness, its merchants and residents work with the government as much as against it. Contemporary vendors, like the baratilleros before them, leverage the economic value of their trades to build alliances that protect their interests. In Tepito, resistance includes the ability to straddle Mexico’s underground and official worlds, and to exploit the many linkages between them.

The post Why Mexico City’s Tepito ‘Exists Because It Resists’ appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Together with Democracy International and Metropolitan Autonomous University for the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy 2023, Zócalo convened an audience of over 100 at the Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América (House of the First Print Shop in the Americas). We were there in the historic space, just across a narrow road from the National Palace and seat of the president’s office, to ask a question as pressing for Mexico—whose president has recently been accused of attempting to erode his nation’s democratic norms—as it is for the world: “Are Elected Presidents Bad for Democracy?”

The panel included political scientist David Altman, journalist Tess Bacalla, and Democracy International’s European expert Daniela Vancic. During the night, they spoke of the unique challenges facing democracy across the world, citing not only the abuse of power by presidents but also a weakening of civil society organizations and other institutions, such as courts and legislatures.

Former mayor of Los Angeles and Zócalo board member Antonio Villaraigosa gave opening comments, citing the importance of the event’s topic. “Across the world, we’re seeing people get elected to the presidency that don’t believe in democracy,” he said.

Zócalo’s very own Joe Mathews (who is also co-president of the Global Forum) moderated the event, and he opened up the discussion with a history lesson on how the first presidential offices were held not by a national leader, but within the British university system. Mathews then asked the panelists to speak about their observations around the office of the presidency, and why presidents can go wild with power: Is it the person in the job or the job itself?

Vancic considered the position of the presidency in relation to the European Union. While Europe doesn’t have a lot of presidents, there is a European Commission president. But that leader—determined by the Spitzenkandidaten process—is not elected directly. The EU Commission presidents are chosen by political parties. “We tried to bring the system closer to the people and it didn’t work,” Vancic said, citing the failure of direct elections for the European Commission president.

Mathews followed up: Should Europeans even want an EU president?

Yes, Vancic replied, because it would “help the European identity,” which is struggling to build up.

Vancic, who lives in Germany but grew up in Michigan, also spoke about the state of the presidency in the United States. She wouldn’t scrap the presidential system in America, she said, but it needs to be made “more democratic” by getting rid of the Electoral College, for instance, which would make the candidate who won the popular vote the president.

The abuse of presidential power, the panelists agreed, was a major issue for all countries.  It’s precisely because of the strength of the presidency in the Philippines that the nation’s state of democracy is dire, Bacalla said. With the return of the Marcos and Duterte families to power last year, the Philippines is now ruled by political dynasties. “It’s as if the People Power Revolution of 1986 didn’t happen at all,” she said, referring to the movement that ousted then-President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.  The succeeding president, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, made sure that the new constitution had good, strong provisions that recognized community organizations in the role of governance. But even so, in successive years, Bacalla says, the Philippine presidency has been used to advance controversial policies, such as President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and anti-terrorism bill, which have led to widespread human rights abuses.

Altman, who is a political scientist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, spoke about presidential systems in comparison to other systems, like parliamentary ones. “I can mention as many bad presidents as bad prime ministers,” he observed. In Latin America, the presidential systems combined with proportional representation seemed to create abusive regimes, he said. But presidential systems inherently aren’t bad, Altman said, pointing to the value of the constant clash of powers between the executive and other institutions and political units. He even saw hope in the presidency of Donald Trump in the U.S. The country “survived,” he said, meaning the institutions worked. “American democracy was resilient enough to face that.”

As the discussion wrapped up, audience members lined up to ask questions. Bruno Kaufman, co-director of the Global Forum on Direct Democracy, asked about indirect presidencies, which prompted the panelists to speak about the importance of other forms of governance, related to direct democracy.

Vancic cited the need to protect civil society. “There’s a reason autocrats go for civil society first,” she said.

Bacalla cited the importance of debate among citizens. Before fake news, she said, there was healthy political discussion among people. “We’ve lost that,” she said.

Both spoke of the systemic and structural issues with presidential systems, but placed people—citizens, leaders—undoubtedly at the center of these democratic landscapes.

The post Is Something Rotten With the State of Presidencies? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Read in English

No existen democracias sin algún tipo de polarización, lo que no es en sí mismo nocivo ni patológico. En realidad, las instituciones democráticas están diseñadas para canalizar el disenso, permitir la competencia pacífica entre grupos y partidos, y procesar las diferencias entre mayorías y minorías. Una dosis de polarización puede ser consustancial a la vida en una sociedad pluralista.

La intensidad de la polarización difiere dependiendo del tema y de la influencia de quien difunde mensajes divisivos. No es lo mismo la polarización que genera la inauguración del nuevo aeropuerto metropolitano, que el clivaje que trae consigo el tema del aborto, cuya explicación tiene cortes histórico-sociales más profundos.

Cuando en México se usa el término polarización, éste nos remite a diferentes entendimientos: polarizaciones nuevas y antiguas, las saludables para el debate cívico, las destructivas, las estructurales y las de coyuntura. También se habla de la polarización basada en valores, la que produce la desinformación, la polarización online y offline.

Por consiguiente, conviene precisar el tipo de distanciamiento social que afecta los cimientos de la convivencia democrática en el país. Me refiero a la hiperpolarización que se observa en redes sociales y plataformas digitales, caracterizada por descalificaciones de todo tipo, resentimiento, discursos de odio, post-verdad e incitaciones a la violencia. De acuerdo con Luis Porto, con este tipo de encono, “se transforma la política no en lucha de ideas sino en lucha de afectos, de emociones de atracción y repulsión: ellos contra nosotros. Se pierde la identidad colectiva común y se produce una polarización identitaria”.^[1]Porto, Luis, “La necesidad de reducir la polarización política: ¿nuevo contrato social o consensos en políticas específicas?”, Op Ed. 19 de diciembre de 2022, … Continue reading Lo alarmante de este fenómeno es que actores o grupos de poder promueven abiertamente la polarización, utilizándola como estrategia para impulsar intereses políticos, notoriamente, en contextos electorales.

Pongamos como ejemplo el accidente ocurrido en el Metro de la Ciudad de México en enero de 2023, que resultó en la trágica pérdida de una vida humana y varias personas heridas.^[2]Un antecedente cercano fue la caída de un tren de las vías elevadas de la Línea 12 del Metro en mayo de 2021, que ocasionó 26 víctimas mortales y más de una centena de heridos. Los peritajes … Continue reading Aun cuando las evidencias sugieren fallas en el mantenimiento de las vías y de los trenes como la causa del percance, las autoridades capitalinas hablaron de “sospechas de actos malintencionados” y posible sabotaje, insinuando, sin mayor fundamento, un ataque deliberado para afectar la imagen de la actual Jefa de Gobierno y aspirante a la presidencia de la república. De inmediato, se anunció la movilización de 6 mil elementos militares de la Guardia Nacional para resguardar las instalaciones del Metro, una medida ampliamente cuestionada por gran parte de la ciudadanía de la capital. El tema en redes sociales adquirió la forma de un enfrentamiento entre los seguidores del partido en el gobierno y sus opositores, desplazando la discusión sobre las ineficiencias del sistema de transporte y la impartición de justicia para las víctimas. Al convertirse el Estado en un agente activo de polarización, se incrementa la desconfianza y la incapacidad para debatir soluciones a los problemas desde el interés colectivo.

Este tipo de polarización, que erosiona la democracia y promueve la segregación, se alimenta de la competencia entre versiones opuestas de la realidad, en la que difieren ya no solo las opiniones, sino los mismos hechos, y en la que cada persona refuerza sus creencias en cámaras de eco, acudiendo a fuentes de datos ad hoc y a informaciones distorsionadas por la competencia político-electoral.

En este contexto, debemos cuestionarnos ¿cómo hacer para acrecentar la búsqueda de la verdad y disminuir la necesidad de caos, odio y agresión que caracteriza la polarización? Un posible camino es promover ejercicios de democracia deliberativa, que permitan encontrar espacios y puntos de coincidencia, esos acuerdos básicos que refuerzan la fe en la democracia y en la solución pacífica de los conflictos. Espacios que acerquen a la comunidad, a la juventud, a sectores trabajadores y a grupos en situación de vulnerabilidad, en una lógica de diálogo y búsqueda de soluciones a desafíos concretos. La gente se vuelve menos polarizada conforme se discuten problemas locales y no controversias identitarias.

Como muestran los ejercicios del profesor James S. Fishkin, Director del Centro para la Democracia Deliberativa de la Universidad de Stanford, el mero intercambio de ideas entre personas que piensan distinto reduce la animosidad y puede acercar las posturas extremas. Es necesario tender puentes entre los polos e incentivar, no reprimir, a quien descubra mediante el diálogo que las personas que no piensan igual pueden tener buenas razones para ello.

Uno de los grandes desafíos de la democracia mexicana es que el desacuerdo se vive como enemistad. Los rivales son vistos como contrincantes que no merecen tener voz, a quienes hay que aplastar junto con sus ideas divergentes. De ahí la importancia de lograr que la gente acepte la necesidad de coexistir. Hace falta lograr ese entendimiento elemental sobre los hechos y las verdades, un fundamento que nos permita conversar sobre nuestros retos con base en intereses comunes.

Debatir es reconocer el desacuerdo y respetarlo, construir sobre él, encontrar las concurrencias sin obsesionarse con los puntos de división. De ese material se compone una ciudadanía democrática, un tejido que no pueden construir los gobiernos por sí solos, ni las instituciones electorales. Se requiere la participación del sistema educativo, de las empresas, de los medios de comunicación, de las familias. Y ese diálogo empieza por impulsar una escucha inclusiva. Tal como señaló la ex primera ministra de Nueva Zelandia, Jacinda Ardern, es importante que la gente se sienta escuchada, aunque el resultado del proceso no le favorezca al final. De esa manera podremos superar el discurso divisionista que solo beneficia los intereses de algunos.

The post Carta de la Ciudad de México<span class="colon">:</span> ¿Puede la polarización construir democracia? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

What are the obstacles and opportunities facing democracy today? Zócalo is publishing a series of letters to highlight how the world’s democratic ideals are faring in practice. From Mexico: Public policy expert Javier Gonzalez explores how the country might use its rampant polarization to build better dialogue.

This series is presented in tandem with Thursday’s Zócalo event in Mexico City—“Are Elected Presidents Bad for Democracy?,” presented in partnership with Democracy International and Metropolitan Autonomous University for the Global Forum for Modern Direct Democracy 2023.

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What does polarization mean, here in Mexico?

There are no democracies without some kind of polarization, which is not in itself harmful or pathological. Democratic institutions are designed to channel dissent, allow peaceful competition between groups and parties, and process differences between majorities and minorities. A dose of polarization can be essential to life in a pluralistic society.

The intensity of the polarization differs depending on the issue and the influence of who spreads divisive messages. The polarization generated by the inauguration of the new metropolitan airport to serve Mexico City is not the same as the cleavage that the issue of abortion brings with it.

When polarization is mentioned in Mexico, it refers to different understandings of the term: new and old polarizations, healthy ones for civic debate, destructive ones, structural ones. There is also talk of polarization based on values, polarization produced by disinformation, and polarization both online and offline.

So, let’s specify that when we talk about the type of social distancing that affects the foundations of democratic coexistence in the country, we are talking about hyperpolarization. This is the severe polarization observed on social networks and digital platforms, and usually characterized by resentment, hate speech, post-truth, and incitement to violence.

With this type of anger, writes the Uruguayan economist and writer Luis Porto of the Organization of American States, “Politics is transformed not into a struggle of ideas but into a struggle of affections, of emotions of attraction and repulsion: them against us. The common collective identity is lost and identity polarization is produced.”

What is alarming about this phenomenon is that powerful actors or groups openly promote polarization, using it as a strategy to foster political interests, notably in electoral contexts.

Take the train collision that occurred in the Mexico City Metro in January 2023, which resulted in the tragic loss of a human life, and dozens of people injured. Even when the evidence suggests failures in train and track maintenance as the cause of the accident, capital authorities spoke of “suspicions of malicious acts” and possible sabotage. Thus, they insinuated, without further foundation, that the accident was a deliberate attack to affect the image of the current head of government in Mexico City, who is considered a likely candidate for the Mexican presidency.

Immediately, officials announced the mobilization of 6,000 members of the National Guard to protect the Metro facilities, a measure widely questioned by many of the capital’s citizens. On social networks the issue took the form of a confrontation between supporters of the ruling party and its opponents, displacing discussions about the inefficiencies of the transportation system and the administration of justice for the victims. When the state becomes an active agent of polarization, it increases mistrust and makes it impossible to debate solutions in a meaningful way.

This type of polarization, which erodes democracy and promotes segregation, feeds on the competition between opposing versions of reality. In echo chambers, each person reinforces their beliefs, resorting to ad hoc data sources and information distorted by political-electoral competition.

In this context, we must ask ourselves how to increase the search for truth and reduce the need for chaos, hatred, and aggression that characterizes polarization. One possible path is to promote exercises in deliberative democracy, which make it possible to find points of agreement that can reinforce faith in democracy and in the peaceful solution of conflicts. A related path is to build creative spaces that bring together communities, youth, workers, and groups in vulnerable situations. When people in such spaces apply the logic of dialogue and search for solutions to specific challenges, often in local contexts, they become less polarized.

As the exercises of Professor James S. Fishkin, director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University, have shown, the mere exchange of ideas between people who think differently reduces animosity and can bring extreme positions closer together. America In One Room was one of such exercises of deliberation as a remedy to depolarize highly divided environments.

It is necessary to build bridges between the poles and encourage, not repress, those who discover through dialogue that people who do not think alike may have good reasons for it.

One of the great challenges of Mexican democracy is that citizens experience disagreement as enmity. Rivals are seen as voiceless opponents, who must be crushed along with their divergent ideas. Hence the importance of getting people to accept the need to coexist. On such a foundation, it should be possible to build basic understandings that allow us to talk about our challenges based on our common interests.

Debating is acknowledging disagreement and respecting it, building on it, and finding communal ground instead of obsessing over dividing points. A democratic citizenship is made up of this material, a fabric that cannot be built by governments alone, nor by electoral institutions. The participation of the educational system, companies, the media, and families is required. And that dialogue begins by promoting inclusive listening.

As former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has pointed out, it is important that people feel heard, even if the outcome of the process does not go their way in the end. That way we can overcome the divisive discourse that only benefits the interests of some.

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This April, the government of Mexico City’s central Cuauhtémoc alcaldía, or borough, mandated that all its rótulos—the hand-painted signs decorating street vendors’ kiosks—be erased. The colorful optical illusions, diverse typographies, and fantastical portraits of sandwiches, juices, and smoothies that have become an essential aspect of the city’s built environment had to be washed off or painted over, making the kiosks nothing more than a backdrop for the alcaldía’s sad, gray-and-white official seal.

A rótulo advertising tortas. Courtesy of author.

The kiosks, which are ubiquitous on Mexico City’s sidewalks and public squares, are small metal stands with panels that open to create shade for the clients during the day, and then fold down and lock at night to create a closed, secure box. The rule to homogenize them came as part of the Jornada Integral de Mejoramiento del Entorno Urbano, or Comprehensive Program to Improve the Urban Environment, which counts among its objectives ensuring that “merchants on public streets maintain a clean workspace at all times.” Sandra Cuevas, the borough mayor, has said that the program will “enable everyone to coexist in peace and harmony” and that “the cleanliness and beauty of the borough is a task shared by all.” Apparently, despite the fact that rótulos have long been of interest to academics and museums as part of Mexico’s folk art tradition, the administration considers the hand-painted graphics to be at odds with their vision of “cleanliness”—and a threat to coexisting in peace and harmony.

This isn’t the first time that Mexico City’s government has implemented measures to control images on its streets and public squares, and that the arbitrary motivations for doing so have caused systematic losses of artistic expression and of craftspeoples’ jobs. In the early 1940s, for example, the city government prohibited murals on the walls of pulquerías, establishments dedicated to the consumption of pulque, a milk-like alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of agave plants. The murals, staples at pulquerías throughout the city, combined text with images: The humorous names of the bars appeared in huge lettering next to landscapes, figures of dancers and mariachis, or depictions of agave plants.

While the city considered the murals an eyesore, others thought differently. The pulquería walls “were places where Mexican folk artists made important murals,” celebrated painter and architect Juan O’Gorman said in his 1973 biography, and rules banning them were “in effect a government regulation to eliminate one of the most important forms of artistic expression in Mexico.” Writing in the magazine Mexican Folkways in 1926, Diego Rivera criticized the city’s bourgeoisie for considering the murals “one of the principal shames of Mexico,” and seeking to erase them. Like O’Gorman, Rivera saw the murals as markers of tradition and predecessors of his revolutionary, popular art. American photographer Edward Weston’s images of the murals have been collected by the MOMA and the Center for Creative Photography.

Later, Ernesto P. Uruchurtu, who served as chief of the Federal District (the equivalent of the mayor before Mexico City was incorporated as a city-state in 2016) from 1952-1966, made it his mission to squeeze neon signs out of the city. Uruchurtu hated neon signs because he often saw them near brothels and cantinas, which offended his sense of morality. So from the start of his term, he denied permits for new ones. And in 1971, the government of Octavio Sentíes Gómez decided to make signage in the Historic Center district uniform, allowing only black and white lettering in the district’s marquees and shop windows, formerly filled with vivid colors. Like the rótulos, all old signs had to be taken down, no matter their age or artistic quality.

Now, Cuevas is going after street vendors’ kiosks, which have outlasted those previous efforts to homogenize the city. This mandate is at odds with the priorities of most of the residents of the borough. Despite how much space the kiosks take up on the city’s sidewalks, despite how hard they can make it to navigate our neighborhoods, they are part of our lives. Many of us chilangos, or residents of Mexico City, are loyal clients of specific stands, and have relationships with the merchants.

A sign for “La Arenita” creperie featuring luchadores and a wrestling ring. Courtesy of author.

Rótulos, the kiosks’ brightly painted signs, are an integral part of our experience of urban life. They are bridges between clients and vendors that create empathy and affection. They make the city’s public spaces friendlier and more human, reminding us that graphic design and advertising beyond corporations is possible. (Interestingly, the borough isn’t covering up signs painted with the logos of newspapers or commercial brands. For some reason, officials feel the generic graphic design that has invaded neighborhoods along with voracious gentrification—Coca-Cola logos and the like—is worth conserving.)

Rótulos are also a draw for tourists, and the subject of academic investigations. They show up in art publications and exhibitions. The exhibition Sensacional de Diseño Mexicano, which collected artistic advertisements from small businesses in Mexico, traveled to 12 galleries around the world, for instance, and its catalog has become the fundamental text on folk advertising not only in Mexico, but all over the Western Hemisphere. And anyone familiar with current trends in Mexican graphic design or contemporary art knows how often high culture draws on the visual language of the rotulistas. In contemporary artist Francis Alÿs’ “Sign Painting Project,” for instance, Alÿs partnered with three rotulistas to create paintings that appropriate rótulos’ visual language for works sold on the global art market.

In the weeks since the mandate was put into place, residents of the Cuauhtémoc have shared photos of the borough’s rótulos on social media. These celebrations of the intricate, inventive, painted designs keep multiplying—demonstrations of dissatisfaction with the borough government’s attack on our local folk art. And through the posts, we’ve begun organizing to create an archive of rótulos—to save them, even if only in our memories. We are calling it the Chilango Network for the Defense of Folk Art and Design (Red Chilanga en Defensa del Arte y la Gráfica Popular, or RECHIDA, which also means “very cool” in Mexico City slang), on Instagram at @re.chida.

The Cuauhtémoc borough’s decision accelerates the loss of an artistic trade and a form of folk art that was already at risk. It adds to a trend of Mexico City’s public space becoming more bland, less user-friendly, and less attractive for everyone—local or foreign. The capital has already lost many of the traditions that once made it special: the Easter tradition of burning cardboard effigies of Judas in neighborhood plazas, the vendors who sold balloons decorated by hand, the pulquería murals whose erasure O’Gorman lamented.

All over the world, the intangible heritage of public space has been destroyed in favor of a generic appearance. Unique and eclectic playgrounds, benches, pavements, forms of advertising, and even trees have been displaced for a limited catalog of prefabricated objects designed for an ideal public sphere that in reality does not exist, anywhere in the world. Eliminating rótulos doesn’t only insult the artists who painted them and de-personalize street kiosks. It also deprives everyone of the right to a city that integrates all those who live there and who make it function: the rotulista and those who enjoy his work, the sandwich-maker and those who eat his food. With the elimination of its rótulos, Mexico City does not look more like Paris or London. It simply looks like a sadder, more generic version of itself.

The post The Whitewashing of Mexico City’s Hand-Painted Signs appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

On June 25, 1983, two distinct marches set out from Mexico City’s Monumento a Los Niños Héroes. One was a traditional march, with a serious tone in line with the established patterns for Mexican leftist marches. The other included not only queer Mexicans but also sex workers and punk-like chavos banda, who laughed, danced, and wreaked fun havoc—or, in Mexican parlance, engaged in desmadre. This second march also included a stop at the U.S. Embassy to burn Ronald Reagan in effigy to protest U.S. interventions in Central America.

The two contingents were at odds. In 1984, they even came to blows, pushing and shoving each other at the marches’ end point, the Hemiciclo a Benito Juárez.

Many contemporary queer Mexicans don’t know this history, yet it is more important than ever today. In 1983, queer Mexicans faced turbulent times, grappling with the effects of the crushing 1982 debt crisis, early news of the AIDS epidemic, and fallout from U.S. interventionism in Central America. Today, queer people face a parallel conjuncture: economic recession, contentious politics, and a War on Drugs that has increased violence against women and LGBTQ Mexicans, and now COVID-19.

In both historical moments, economic and political crises fractured the queer community. Why? Because queer activists are shaped by class and other factors. Around the world, they wrestle with economics, politics, and with what those things have to do with sexual and gender identity. When economic crises accentuate class-based tensions, it plays out as conflict over how to be queer and how to fight for queer liberation.

As in many other parts of the world, publicly visible queer activism in Mexico began in the 1970s. While same-sex acts had been technically legal in Mexico since the late 19th century, individuals who identified as jotos, vestidas, lesbianas, homosexuales, travestis, mujercitos, and bisexuales (terms that refer to people who engaged in same-sex acts and/or questioned gender expectations, and do not map perfectly to today’s LGBTQ categories in the United States) faced ostracization from family and friends and harassment, arrest, and extortion by police via public decency laws.

In the face of this, Mexico City queers of the mid-20th century created class-based, largely hidden social lives. Wealthy gays gathered in private homes or in clubs with expensive entry fees. Some searched out hookups with poor gay men in bars or on street corners, slumming in what they called the “guetos lumpen” or “lumpen ghettos.” Poor homosexuales, especially the vestidas or cross-dressing men, engaged in sex work.

Though “hidden,” these queer social spaces were never fully out of sight—interested people could go to the right public spaces, department stores, restaurants, and clubs, look the part, and ask the right questions to find others like them. The Mexico City police knew where to find them too, and subjected gay and/or cross-dressing men to verbal harassment and razzias (raids) at bars. Murders in the community went uninvestigated.

So, in the early 1970s, inspired by the 1968 student movement as well as the recent rises of feminism, anti-imperialism, and the civil rights movement, Mexico City’s queer people began to organize. But just as past gay social life had been class-stratified, so was early organizing. Cosmopolitan middle- and upper-class queers traveled to New York City in 1969 in the wake of the Stonewall Riots and to Europe to meet members of the French front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire. Inspired, they returned to Mexico and formed the Frente de Liberación Homosexual de México (Homosexual Liberation Front of Mexico, or FLH).

The FLH operated within the confines of homes, largely in the form of reading groups. Many knew from experience in other kinds of political organizing that the police and military often targeted activists to squash dissent. Some worried further that taking their queer activism public would alienate them from their comrades in other activist circles, who often saw homosexuality as irrelevant to political organizing—or worse, bourgeois and anti-revolutionary.

Eventually, a group of frustrated ex-FLH members got fed up with secrecy. In 1978, they branched off to create the Frente Homosexual de Acción Revolucionaria (The Homosexual Front of Revolutionary Action, FHAR) and joined a march celebrating the Cuban Revolution—marking the first time an openly queer contingent marched for change on Mexico City streets. The following year FHAR joined forces with Lambda, a Trotskyist gay liberation group, and the lesbian-feminist Oikabeth to organize Mexico City’s first marcha de orgullo homosexual—or gay pride march.

Poster from the First Marcha de Orgullo Homosexual. Courtesy of Colectivo Sol.

At first, the three groups worked together to push back against police raids. They wrote letters to officials and op-eds to counter criminalizing and negative portrayals of queer individuals, and they talked with newspaper reporters about using respectful terminology. They marched to uphold their constitutional rights to expression and assembly. They also collaborated with activists demanding justice for the desaparecidos (the hundreds of activists and allies kidnapped, tortured, and secretly incarcerated or murdered during the Mexican government’s Dirty War from 1964 to 1982). The activists’ queer identities intersected with their activities as unionized laborers, student activists, party militants, and members of other political organizations.

Yet as the economy plummeted in the early 1980s, class-based tensions surfaced. The activists argued about the meaning of homosexuality, the role of travestis (cross dressers) in the movement, the appropriation of homophobic slurs, and how best to present their movement in the world and demand respect for their rights. When middle-class LAMBDA ran candidates for legislative bodies, others critiqued them as assimilationist. When working-class-aligned activists—whose coalitions included sex workers and chavos banda—appropriated slurs and expressed their queerness flamboyantly, they put themselves at odds with lesbian groups, who argued that cross-dressing gay men and transvestites made a ridicule of cis-women. These tensions divided the march into two fractions.

Debates over assimilation and respectability still haunt queer organizations. Today, there remains a divide over capitalism, assimilation, and “selling out” at Mexican Pride. Mexico City hosts two Pride marches. The first is larger, and the kind you see around the world: filled with floats sponsored by LGBTQ organizations, NGOs, government offices, and multi-national companies such as Visa and General Electric. The second is much smaller, and its participants are leftist queer activists.

The movement is splintered. As in the U.S., the mainstream face of Mexican queer activism focuses on “sexual diversity” and has focused its attention on marriage, representation within government institutions, and the creation of gay-themed consumer products such as Levi’s’ Pride collection. Meanwhile, a smaller group of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist queer Mexicans organize around ideas of “corporeal and sexual dissidence,” seeking specially to address violence against trans individuals. This violence has been exacerbated by the increasing visibility of separatist feminists, some lesbian, who reject transwomen with a discourse that resembles that of the country’s elite right-wing party. On the surface these can seem like simple disagreements about respectability politics, but as in the 1980s, the factions fall along class politics as many transwomen in vulnerable situations are working-class.

These divisions are not uniquely Mexican. Around the world, many queer activists are tired of the pandering by multi-national corporations who sponsor floats but prop up destructive business and war efforts. These activists reject mainstream Pride and argue for organizing around efforts that prioritize trans individuals and working-class queers.

It’s important to remember that the queer movement emerged out of precisely these coalitions—solidarity between middle-class and working-class queer activists and with other groups fighting for liberation such as workers, immigrants, and oppressed racial groups. In 1979, Mexican queer activists chanted, “Nobody is free until we are all free!” That spirit must animate today’s queer activists.

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COVID-19 hit our side of the world relatively late. That meant that Mexico City, where I live, had one month’s notice to prepare after seeing what was happening in Asia and Europe. Unfortunately, we did not use that advance warning well, and now we are still paying for it. Almost a year after COVID-19 hit us, we have reached approximately 600,000 confirmed cases and 30,000 deaths.

As the city continues to suffer under the pandemic—even as other parts of the world have COVID-19 under control, or are well on their way to getting vaccinated—I find myself thinking back to that time last February and early March when life went on as usual in Mexico. It seems strange in the memory: Why did we think we could be spared?

It took until March 23, 2020, for Mexican authorities to officially urge people to stay home. Still, they noted the low number of reported cases and said there was nothing to be afraid of; we would be out of confinement by April 19. Then that date was pushed back to June. After that, the government stopped estimating when lockdown would be over.

It’s still not over. We residents of Mexico City have been officially on lockdown for nearly a year, since March 23. Or to be more accurate, we are supposed to be on lockdown.

At first, people stayed home and followed the protocols. So, at least for the first two or three months, we experienced unprecedented silence in our urbanity. The city was eerily quiet, especially at night. The number of cars (both parked and moving) in the streets was reduced dramatically, which gave some streets a post-apocalypse aura.

I had never experienced such a feeling of solitude in Mexico City before. One night in last year’s spring—I can’t remember exactly when, since keeping track of time’s passage has been challenging—I was walking home at around 9 p.m., and it felt like the world had suddenly stopped. I was the only person walking in the street and the only noises were my footsteps. I remember thinking how unaccustomed we are, in a city of 20 million people, to being utterly alone. It gave me the creeps and I hurried my steps back home.

While the usual city sounds were muted, confinement wasn’t entirely quiet—it brought the audible singing of birds. A family of butterflies surprised me by making a home among the leaves of the plants in my balcony. I’m not sure if the butterflies or the birds are new; it was having silence and the time to actually notice both of them that made them remarkable.

But the peace and quiet did not last.

Early on, a traffic light system was employed by authorities to tell us what’s what. Red light meant a total lockdown. Green meant a total lift of lockdown measures—or at least that’s what we’ve been told, because we have yet to experience green. The pandemic traffic light has since gone from red to all different shades of orange to red again… and then once more into “orange with caution.”

As time passed, and the traffic light stayed at red or orange, many grew tired of staying home and gave themselves the unofficial green light. There wasn’t much the authorities could do to stop them. With every increasing day since last spring, I’ve seen more people on the streets—day and night—from my window. One day last the summer, the street vendors came back and never went back home again—not even during the deadliest weeks of the pandemic at the very end of last year.

The parties started last summer too. You could hear loud music and singing from more than one rooftop on any given night. Traffic on the streets also came back around that time, though it would not be until December that it returned to pre-pandemic levels.

December and January would prove to be the worst of the pandemic, and not just because of the spikes in cases and deaths. In those months, people lost all sensitivity and returned to their lives. It is still hard for me to believe what I witnessed, but the juxtaposition was real. Hospitals—private and public—became so full that people were being treated on the waiting area benches, and sometimes even on the streets. People were queueing for five or six hours every day in order to get oxygen tanks filled up for sick relatives, and social media channels were full of ads featuring oxygen providers and resellers. Everyone had a sick friend or relative.

And yet parties and gatherings did not stop. They accelerated in number and grew in size. Some private companies even held year-end parties—maskless, massive indoor parties. This was the case of TV Azteca and several other enterprises owned by Ricardo Salinas Pliego, one of the most influential businessmen in Mexico. Salinas did not care about the backlash he and his employees received through social media, claiming they were just living without fear and were ready to face the risks of contracting COVID-19.

This was not shocking or surprising. Ours is a country where the president has openly refused to wear a mask or take any measure to enforce lockdowns since the beginning of the pandemic. In his own words: “Everything here is optional. Nothing is mandatory.” It was not a surprise either when he contracted COVID-19 at the end of January. Being sick didn’t even convince him to mask up; while infectious, he had a TV crew come to his house so he could record a message to the nation about his health condition.

Some ten days after his contagion, the president returned to his daily routine, without adjustments. At that time, which was just over a month ago, the COVID-19 traffic light in Mexico City was still red. But you would never know that by walking the bustling early February streets. All formal businesses remained closed, but many business owners resorted to selling their wares on the sidewalks just outside their formal establishments. Who could blame them? Given the lack of government support for businesses, this fend-for-yourself mood permeated throughout the city. Life was not the same as before the pandemic, but this was as close as it could get.

February was a very strange month. We had been on red light since mid-December when hospitals were completely full. Even private hospitals used by the rich were denying new admissions. There were many reports of oxygen canisters being stolen (at gunpoint) from the delivery services. But cases started declining slowly, and restaurants and shops were pushing for reopening. The government announced that the first vaccine doses for elderly people would soon be administered. Most of us spent all day on February 1 trying to get our elders registered at the vaccination website. Most of us failed and had to wait until some days later, when the site started working properly.

By the month’s end, vaccination of the elderly had started in earnest, with a bit less than a million vaccines applied in a week or so. Many elders had to stand in line for more than five hours to get their shots. Despite the obvious need for a better vaccination strategy, it was a great relief to watch people finally get immunized.

Restaurants with outdoors seating space have now been allowed to reopen. So have stores, with capacities limited. Public transportation is as crowded as ever (and no social distancing is possible inside a metro wagon or urban bus at rush hours). I am glad to report that most people on the streets are wearing masks (and around 70 percent actually wear it over the nose and mouth). More bicyclists are using the roads than ever before.

Not everything has opened up yet. Schools and non-essential workplaces are still shut down, though recently the public has been pushing for school reopening. It doesn’t appear people will tolerate home schooling and virtual classes much longer.

Mexico City may be treating the pandemic like it’s over, but the traffic light system remains at “orange with caution.” The road ahead of us remains a long one. Vaccination efforts are falling way short of their goals, and herd immunity won’t be reached anytime soon. But citizens want to resume their normal lives, even if it means risking new outbreaks.

I have been watching this year-long unraveling from my window, for I am privileged to have a job and family life that allow me to stay confined. I am not sure what to think about the future. Perhaps we have learned new ways of resilience that will be important to dealing with other emergencies when the pandemic recedes. But the government also has demonstrated a failure to lead, communicate clearly, and enforce its own rules in a crisis. And too many people here have shown too much indifference and stubbornness.

When this is over, I hope that we will be more sensitive to suffering and more willing to compromise, and to support each other.

The post A Letter From Mexico City, Where We’re Still Supposed to Be on Lockdown appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Located inside the sprawling complex of the Ministry of National Defense, the headquarters of the Mexican army, the museum gets its unofficial moniker because it displays the craziest artifacts that Mexican soldiers have nabbed from drug traffickers. Vials of marijuana, crystal meth, heroin, cocaine—even black cocaine—are on display alongside chunks of “trap cars”—vehicles, with secret compartments in their gas tanks and seats, which are used to drive narcotics into the United States.

The highlight of it all is a room entitled “Narco Culture.” Inside are the glittering trinkets that traffickers spend their blood-stained dollars on—which means it’s where some of the billions of dollars that Americans pay for drugs end up. A cell phone is bathed in gold; a table and chair set are carved with symbols of the Santa Muerte, or Holy Death; a majestic lion and beautifully muscled tiger are stuffed and standing.

The “narco saint.” Courtesy of Ioan Grillo.

Journalists and investigators have to apply to the Mexican army to get into the museum. It would be seen as bad taste to open it to tourists while violence still rages. Since Mexico launched a military crackdown on drug cartels in 2006, there have been more than 300,000 homicides and tens of thousands of disappeared; soldiers and police themselves have carried out massacres.

Over two decades of covering the violence in Mexico, I have been to the museum three times for research, and I’ve watched the collection—which is displayed across several large rooms—expand with the addition of ever-weirder items.

For my most recent visit, I was focused on the weaponry because I came to research my recent book, Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels, which explores the iron river of guns flowing from the United States over the Rio Grande. But I was also interested in the culture around guns, and how the narcos decorate them like they are sacred items.

The guns in the narco museum include collections of full-sized rifles, especially Kalashnikovs, which the narcos affectionally call “cuernos de chivo” or “goats horns” because of their curved clips. These are mostly made in Eastern Europe, exported into the United States, sold retail, and then smuggled into Mexico. As a journalist, I have covered too many murder scenes where the bullets of AK’s and AR-15s are scattered on the street.

The narcos are also fond of handguns. In the museum, you see those that have been decorated and turned into high-priced collectibles or ornaments. Many have the initials of the drug lords spelled out with diamonds or other precious stones. One has JGL, short for Joaquin Guzman Loera, known to the world as El Chapo, who after many escapes was convicted in 2019 in New York and sentenced to life in the “Super Max” prison in Colorado.

Another handgun has an eagle under the letters ACF, the initials of Armado Carrillo Fuentes, nicknamed the Lord of the Skies because he flew cocaine in a fleet of private jets. Carrillo Fuentes is alleged to have died in a plastic surgery accident in 1997, while one of his old DC-6 planes has been turned into an attraction in a children’s play park in the town of Parral, Chihuahua.

Others bear the names of their owners’ heroes, such as Mexican revolutionaries Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa. And another pistol still has the name of Versace, citing the Italian fashion mogul and his label. It grabs my attention how drug lords can celebrate both revolutionaries and entrepreneurs. They are rebel capitalists.

Staring at the golden guns, alongside religious symbols such as the Holy Death in statuettes and paintings, makes me wonder why the narcos put their weapons on such a pedestal. Perhaps they venerate them as sources of power, the tools that have elevated them from poor campesino famers in mountain villages to millionaires or even billionaires in a booming global industry.

Yet the same guns drown their homeland in blood—and have been used to end the lives of many of these same gangsters and their loved ones. One gun in the narco museum is etched with that chilling quote attributed to Plato: “Only the dead have seen the end of the war.”

Mexico’s drug war has long been about more than drugs. The cartels have diversified into a portfolio of rackets, from stealing vast amounts of oil from pipelines, to wildcat mining that wrecks the environment, to seizing control of migration routes and extorting the undocumented people heading to the United States. The different sides of this war are blurred with top government officials accused of working for the cartels; among them, former Public Security Secretary Genaro Garcia Luna sits in a U.S. prison on drug trafficking charges.

While we might disagree about aspects of the drug wars, we should agree that they deserve commemoration. There has been a brutal period of violence here that needs to be remembered. Most of the sites of the worst atrocities have been left unmarked, as if nothing happened, when there could be plaques and memorials to them.

The Narco Museum is a tribute to this period. But it shows only one side of the story, one told by the army but showing the ornaments of the drug lords so it is glittering and golden. It doesn’t speak to the suffering.

I hope someday in the future, the museum can be opened up to the public with the golden guns alongside exhibits documenting the bloodshed and tragedy.

Such an opening will mean that the violence is history, a past story of conflict that can be studied, like the Mexican Revolution. If the flow of that iron river of guns could be slowed or stopped, then that day could come sooner.

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