tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/mexico-city-27268/articlesMexico City – The Conversation2022-10-20T10:27:15Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927872022-10-20T10:27:15Z2022-10-20T10:27:15ZWhen digital nomads come to town: governments want their cash but locals are being left behind
– podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490407/original/file-20221018-8364-zq6cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C70%2C5217%2C3347&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Digital nomads: ditch the office chair for a backpack. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jose Luis Carrascosa via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Digital nomads who work as they travel are often attracted by a life of freedom far removed from the daily office grind. Many head to cities that have become known hotspots for remote workers. In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a>, we find out what impact digital nomads have on these cities and the people who live there, and how governments are responding to the phenomenon. </p>
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<p>The La Roma and La Condesa districts of Mexico City have become some of the Mexican capital’s favourite destinations for visitors in recent years. There are long boulevards and the streets are lined with leafy trees and dotted with picturesque parks and fountains. Wander into the right coffee shops and here you’ll find some of the city’s digital nomads, logging on to remote jobs elsewhere.</p>
<p>Speaking to The Conversation Weekly, Erica from Finland tells us she was already working remotely before the pandemic. “Mexico is cheaper, it’s great weather,” she says. “So I figured I might as well move here.”</p>
<p>“The pandemic and the normalisation of remote work has certainly given the digital nomad lifestyle some legitimacy,” says Dave Cook, an anthropologist at University College London in the UK. He’s been <a href="https://theconversation.com/digital-nomads-have-rejected-the-office-and-now-want-to-replace-the-nation-state-but-there-is-a-darker-side-to-this-quest-for-global-freedom-189835">chronicling digital nomads and their motivations</a> for the past seven years, interviewing people about their motivations. </p>
<p>The pandemic also made governments take notice of digital nomads as an economic benefit to cash-strapped economies, says Fabiola Mancinelli, an anthropologist at the University of Barcelona in Spain who also studies digital nomads. “That’s why many countries started to create special visa programmes to attract this niche of travellers,” she explains. Countries don’t expect digital nomads to participate in local life, says Mancinelli, but rather to consume locally using the higher purchasing power they get from earning in stronger currencies. </p>
<p>In Mexico City, however, the arrival of digital nomads is <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/07/28/mexico-city-residents-angered-by-influx-of-americans-speaking-english-gentrifying-area-report/">angering some local residents</a> who are worried about changes to their neighbourhoods and rising rents. Adrián Hernández Cordero, a sociologist at Metropolitan Autonomous University who studies gentrification, distinguishes between tourists and digital nomads. “They seem to me to be in an intermediate position because they don’t come just for a week – they stay for a few months,” he says.</p>
<p>In Mexico City, Cordero says digital nomads are drawn to areas such as La Roma and La Condesa where it’s easy to get around on foot or by public transport, and where there is a proliferation of restaurants and bars. He says that while these areas were already fairly well-off, the middle classes who live there are witnessing a form of “super-gentrification”. </p>
<p>Listen to the full episode to find out more about the different strategies countries are using to attract digital nomads, and what this means for local residents. </p>
<p>This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany, with sound design by Eloise Stevens. Voiceover by Alberto Rodríguez Alvarado. The executive producer was Gemma Ware. Our theme music is by Neeta Sarl. <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/2473/The_Conversation_Weekly_Transcript_When_digital_nomads_come_to_town.docx.pdf?1670603037">Read a transcript of this episode</a>. </p>
<p>You can find us on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also sign up to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a>, or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</p>
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<p><em>Adrián Hernández Cordero is part of the National System of Researchers of the National Council for Science and Technology of the Government of Mexico. Dave Cook and Fabiola Mancinelli do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192787/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
How governments around the world are trying to woo digital nomads. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly PodcastMend Mariwany, Producer, The Conversation Weekly PodcastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1892832022-09-02T12:18:04Z2022-09-02T12:18:04ZAs countries ranging from Indonesia to Mexico aim to attract digital nomads, locals say ‘not so fast’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481872/original/file-20220830-31761-o93l5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=327%2C86%2C5423%2C3742&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A tourist has makeup done ahead of Day of the Dead on Oct. 30, 2021, in Mexico City.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/tourist-is-having-makeup-done-as-a-skull-in-a-costume-news-photo/1350360186?adppopup=true">Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Should your community welcome <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/digital%20nomad">digital nomads</a> – individuals who work remotely, allowing them freedom to bounce from country to country?</p>
<p><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-nomads-9780190931780?cc=us&lang=en&">Our research</a> has found that workers are eager to embrace the flexibility of not being tied to an office. And after experiencing economic losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cities and countries are concocting ways to entice visitors.</p>
<p>One idea involves stretching the meaning of tourism to include remote workers.</p>
<p>Today, a growing number of countries offer so-called “<a href="https://nomadgirl.co/countries-with-digital-nomad-visas/">digital nomad visas</a>.” These visas allow longer stays for remote workers and provide clarity about allowable work activities. For example, officials in Bali, Indonesia, are looking to formalize a process for remote workers to procure visas – “<a href="https://coconuts.co/bali/features/the-faster-the-better-bali-tourism-agency-head-tjokorda-bagus-pemayun-talks-digital-nomad-visa-plans-and-what-it-means-for-the-island/">the faster, the better</a>,” as the head of the island’s tourism agency put it.</p>
<p>Yet pushback from locals in cities ranging <a href="https://time.com/6072062/barcelona-tourism-residents-covid/">from Barcelona</a> to <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/07/28/mexico-city-residents-angered-by-influx-of-americans-speaking-english-gentrifying-area-report/">Mexico City</a> has made it clear that there are costs and benefits to an influx of remote workers. </p>
<p>As we explain in our new book, “Digital Nomads: In Search of Freedom, Community, and Meaningful Work in the New Economy,” the trend of “work tourism” <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/digital-nomads-9780190931780?cc=us&lang=en&">comes with a host of drawbacks</a>.</p>
<h2>Wearing out their welcome</h2>
<p>For as long as there’s been tourism, locals have griped about the outsiders who come and go. These travelers are usually a welcome boost to the economy – <a href="https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/overtourism">up to a point</a>. They can also wear out their welcome. </p>
<p>Perhaps the classic example is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-25/venice-reinventing-itself-as-sustainable-tourism-capital">Venice</a>, where high numbers of tourists stress the canal-filled city’s fragile infrastructure.</p>
<p>In the U.S., New Jersey shore residents have long used the term “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoobie">shoobies</a>” to denigrate the annual throng of short-term summer tourists. In our research on digital nomads in Bali, locals referred to digital nomads and other tourists as “bules” – a word that roughly translates as “foreigners.”</p>
<p>Generally the terms are used to express minor annoyance over crowds and increased traffic. But conventional tourists come and go – their stays usually range from a couple of nights to a couple of weeks. Remote workers stay anywhere from weeks to months – or longer. They spend more time using places and resources traditionally dedicated to the local residents. This raises the chances that outsiders become a grating presence. </p>
<p>Excessive numbers of visitors can also raise sustainability concerns, as waves of tourists tax the environment and infrastructure of many destinations. Many of Bali’s beautiful rice fields and surrounding lush forests, for example, are being converted into hotels and villas to serve tourism.</p>
<h2>Digital nomads look to stretch their dollars</h2>
<p>Whether they’re lazing around or plugging away on their laptops, privileged tourists ultimately change the economics and demographics of an area. </p>
<p>Their buying power increases costs and displaces residents, while traditional businesses make way for ones that cater to their tastes. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-food-became-the-perfect-beachhead-for-gentrification-167761">Where once there was a neighborhood food stand</a>, now there’s an upscale cafe. </p>
<p>This dynamic is only exacerbated by long-term tourists. Services like VRBO and Airbnb make it easy for digital nomads to rent apartments for weeks or months at a time, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45083954">people around the world are increasingly alarmed</a> at how quickly such rentals can change the affordability and character of a place.</p>
<p>Living a vacation lifestyle on a long-term basis implies a need to choose lower-cost destinations. This means that remote workers may particularly contribute to gentrification as they seek out places where their dollars go furthest.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://travelnoire.com/digital-nomads-see-why-mexicans-are-fed-up-with-them">Mexico City</a>, residents fear displacement by remote workers able to pay higher rents. In response to calls to choose Mexico City as a remote working destination, one local succinctly expressed opposition: “<a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22999722/mexico-city-pandemic-remote-work-gentrification">Please don’t</a>.”</p>
<p>And in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/13/new-orleans-airbnb-treme-short-term-rentals">New Orleans</a>, almost half of all properties in the historic <a href="https://nola.curbed.com/2018/5/16/17356630/treme-new-orleans-neighborhood-history-pictures">Tremé district</a> – one of the oldest Black neighborhoods in the U.S. – have been converted to short-term rentals, displacing longtime residents. </p>
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<img alt="Locals wearing purple march through the streets playing instruments." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481877/original/file-20220830-35381-cosh9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In Tremé, New Orleans, nearly half of all dwellings have become short-term rental properties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowd-estimated-at-between-1500-and-2000-people-celebrates-news-photo/525178984?adppopup=true">Leon Morris/Redferns via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Culture becomes commodified</h2>
<p><a href="https://suitcasemag.com/articles/neocolonial-tourism">Neocolonialism</a> in tourism refers to the way processes such as overtourism and gentrification create a power imbalance that favors newcomers and erodes local ways of life. </p>
<p>“There’s a distinction between people who want to learn about the place they are in and those who just like it because it’s cheap,” one digital nomad living in Mexico City <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-07-27/americans-are-flooding-mexico-city-some-mexicans-want-them-to-go-home">recently told the Los Angeles Times</a>. “I’ve met a number of people who don’t really care that they’re in Mexico, they just care that it’s cheap.”</p>
<p>Bali, where <a href="https://www.aseantoday.com/2020/10/balis-economy-struggles-to-survive-without-tourists/">as much as 80%</a> of the island’s economy is estimated to be affected by tourism, offers a stark example. </p>
<p>People come to Bali to be immersed in the culture’s spiritual rituals, art, nature and dance. But there’s also resentment over yoga lovers, resortgoers and digital nomads “taking over” the island. And some locals come to see the tourism in and around temples and rituals as the transformation of something cherished – the nuanced and spiritual aspects of their culture – into experiences to be bought and sold. </p>
<p>For instance, Balinese dance performances are huge tourist draws and are even featured in global promotions for tourism on the island. Yet these performances also have cultural and spiritual meaning, and the impact of tourism on these aspects of dance is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/37628994_Authenticity_and_commodification_of_Balinese_dance_performances">debated even among performers</a>. </p>
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<img alt="People take photographs of people marching in a parade." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481874/original/file-20220830-22-4l4ult.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tourists take pictures of Balinese artists during a parade celebrating the 77th anniversary of Indonesia Independence Day in Bali in August 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/foreign-tourists-take-pictures-of-balinese-artists-during-news-photo/1242552941?adppopup=true">Johannes P. Christo/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>So there is inevitably friction, which can be seen in the high levels of <a href="https://coconuts.co/bali/features/living-in-a-petty-crimes-paradise-balis-unreported-thefts-and-muggings/">petty crime</a> against foreigners. Neocolonialism can also pit people from the same country or culture against one another. For example, <a href="https://www.travelmole.com/news/bali-taxi-wars-flare-again/">conflicts arise</a> between local Balinese taxi cooperatives and taxi services that employ drivers from other parts of Indonesia. </p>
<p>Although remote employees still make up a small portion of the overall tourist population, their work-related needs and longer stays mean they’re more likely to use services and places frequented by locals.</p>
<p>Whether this leads digital nomads to be welcomed or scorned likely depends on both government policies and tourists’ behavior. </p>
<p>Will governments take measures such as protecting locals from mass evictions, or will landlords’ desire for higher rents prevail? Will guests live lightly and blend in, trying to learn the local language and culture? Or will they simply focus on working hard and playing harder? </p>
<p>As remote work reaches an unprecedented scale, the answers to such questions may determine whether “<a href="https://coconuts.co/bali/features/the-faster-the-better-bali-tourism-agency-head-tjokorda-bagus-pemayun-talks-digital-nomad-visa-plans-and-what-it-means-for-the-island/">the faster, the better</a>” attitude toward digital nomad visas and other incentives continues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Locals usually see tourists as a way to boost the economy. But at a certain point, resentment starts to build.Rachael A. Woldoff, Professor of Sociology, West Virginia UniversityRobert Litchfield, Associate Professor of Business, Washington & Jefferson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1481382020-11-19T20:54:48Z2020-11-19T20:54:48ZJFK conspiracy theory is debunked in Mexico 57 years after Kennedy assassination<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369885/original/file-20201117-17-1iw7k3x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=62%2C82%2C3323%2C2074&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This man visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico City while Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico in 1963. Officials thought it might be Oswald.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/unidentified-man-was-considered-to-be-a-possible-clue-to-news-photo/576878000?adppopup=true">Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/57-anos-despues-del-asesinato-de-kennedy-las-pistas-en-mexico-se-agotan-150725">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Most conspiracy theories surrounding President John F. Kennedy’s assassination have been disproven. Kennedy was not killed by <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=ftCGDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PT28&ots=6YB2O31mx1&dq=jfk%20gas%20pressure%20device%20given%20by%20aliens.&pg=PT28#v=onepage&q=jfk%20gas%20pressure%20device%20given%20by%20aliens.&f=false">a gas-powered device triggered by aliens</a> or by actor <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKharrelson.htm">Woody Harrelson’s dad</a>.</p>
<p>But speculation about Kennedy’s Nov. 22, 1963 murder in Dallas continues, fueled by unreleased classified documents, <a href="http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/sbt.htm">bizarre ballistics</a> and the claim of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald – who was later killed on live TV while in police custody – that he was “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbR6vHXD1j0">just a patsy</a>.”</p>
<p>Several JFK assassination experts, like the former New York Times investigative reporter <a href="https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781250060754">Phillip Shenon</a>, see Mexico as the best place to find answers regarding a possible conspiracy and who was behind it. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Images of a type-written visa with official stamps" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370411/original/file-20201119-23-1wf4vcv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oswald’s Mexico visa from 1963, with entry and exit stamps.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mexican Secretary of the Interior</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Just over a month before Kennedy’s killing, Oswald took a bus from Texas to Mexico City. He arrived Friday morning, Sept. 27, 1963 and left very early on Wednesday, Oct. 2, according to <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=112007#relPageId=80&tab=page">American and Mexican intelligence</a>.</p>
<p>Was Oswald a kind of rogue James Bond who went south of the border to consort <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/jfk-assassination-did-castro-kill-kennedy-a-393540.html">with communists, Cuban revolutionaries and spies</a> – or just a deranged killer?</p>
<p>I dug into that question while researching my book on <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Conspiracy-Narratives-South-of-the-Border-Bad-Hombres-Do-the-Twist/Soltero/p/book/9780367470425">conspiracy narratives in Mexico</a>, and I think I found something everybody else missed: a hole in the story of the very man who started a tenacious conspiracy theory about Oswald’s Mexico trip.</p>
<h2>Communist Mexico City</h2>
<p>Mexico was a <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/122508">Cold War hot spot in the mid-20th century</a>, a haven for <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20191113-from-trotsky-to-morales-mexico-s-asylum-tradition">Soviet exiles</a>, <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=62&tab=page">American leftists fleeing the anti-communist persecution of McCarthyism</a> and sympathizers with <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-02-24/new-fidel-castro-memoir-recalls-rebel-s-life-mexico">Cuba’s Castro regime</a>. <a href="https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/7527">Every communist and democratic country</a> had an embassy in Mexico City – the only place in the Western Hemisphere where these enemies coexisted more or less openly.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of Trotsky and River shaking hands, with a smiling Sedova next to them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370108/original/file-20201118-17-lusb3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian exile Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova, meet artist and communist Diego Rivera in Mexico City, 1937.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-revolutionary-leon-trotsky-and-his-wife-natalia-news-photo/88920114?adppopup=true">Enrique Diaz/Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>According to witnesses from the Cuban and Soviet diplomatic missions, Oswald visited their embassies repeatedly on Friday and Saturday. He was desperately seeking visas to those countries, which Americans were then <a href="https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1966021600">prohibited from visiting</a>. </p>
<p>Told such documents would take months to process, Oswald got in a heated argument with the Cuban consul, Emilio Azcué. Oswald also forced a KGB volleyball match on Saturday morning to be canceled when <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/106275/oswalds-tale-by-norman-mailer/">he brandished a weapon at the Soviet consulate, before bursting into tears and leaving</a>. </p>
<p>Those events are well documented by the CIA, <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=46&tab=page">which in the 1960s had ramped up</a> its Mexico operations to <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=73&tab=page">monitor communist activity</a>, even hiring <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=5874#relPageId=53&tab=page">200 Mexican agents to help</a>. The Mexican Secret Service, whose <a href="https://www.crl.edu/midas">1960s-era files Mexico has recently begun to declassify</a>, also tracked Oswald on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, 1963. </p>
<p>Oswald’s whereabouts for the next three-and-a-half days, however, remain unknown.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Gloved hand holds a paper report entitled 'Lee Harvey Oswald'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369884/original/file-20201117-13-iq534t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Mexican intelligence report on Lee Harvey Oswald, declassified in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/historian-shows-a-file-us-president-john-f-kennedy-murderer-news-photo/1136375889?adppopup=true">Pedro Pardo/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A conspiracy theory is born</h2>
<p>A main conspiracy about Oswald’s undocumented time in Mexico City puts him in contact with dangerous Mexicans on the left side of the Cold War. </p>
<p>This story originated in March 1967, when the American consul in the Mexican coastal city of Tampico, Benjamin Ruyle, was buying drinks for local journalists.</p>
<p>One of them – Óscar Contreras Lartigue, a 28-year-old reporter for El Sol de Tampico – told Ruyle he’d met Oswald in 1963 when he was a law student at <a href="https://www.unam.mx">Mexico’s National Autonomous University</a>. </p>
<p>Contreras said he’d been in a pro-Castro campus group and that Oswald had begged this group for help getting a Cuban visa. According to Contreras, Oswald spent two days with these National Autonomous University students, then met up with them again a few days later at the Cuban Embassy. </p>
<p>Evidently afraid for his life, Contreras wouldn’t tell Ruyle much more. He said he himself had traveled to Cuba, knew people in the Castro regime and had blown up the statue of a former Mexican president on campus in Mexico City. Contreras feared <a href="https://theconversation.com/massacres-disappearances-and-1968-mexicans-remember-the-victims-of-a-perfect-dictatorship-104196">persecution for his political activities</a>. </p>
<p>Contreras did say this wasn’t the first time he was sharing his story, though. After JFK was shot, Contreras told Ruyle, he’d commented to his editor that he’d recently met Oswald. </p>
<h2>The Contreras question</h2>
<p>Contreras’ account hinted at suspicious, previously unknown connections between Oswald and communist Cuba made shortly before JFK’s assassination.</p>
<p>His story was, according to a memo later sent from CIA headquarters, “<a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=68260#relPageId=3&tab=page">the first solid investigative lead we have on Oswald’s activities in Mexico</a>.” U.S. government officials <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=SXUpAAAAQBAJ&lpg=PT2&dq=Summers%2C%20Anthony.%202013.%20Not%20in%20Your%20Lifetime%3A%20The%20Assassination%20of%20JFK.%20London%3A%20Headline.&pg=PT306#v=onepage&q&f=false">needed to find out if Contreras was a trustworthy source</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white image of Oswald from the side and front" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/369886/original/file-20201117-19-155n0v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oswald’s mug shot.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-dallas-police-department-mug-shots-of-lee-harvey-oswald-news-photo/576877682?adppopup=true">CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Three months after Ruyle’s happy hour, a CIA official from Mexico City went to Tampico to question Contreras. During the six-hour interrogation, Contreras still refused to go into details, but he did say Oswald never mentioned assassination – only that he said repeatedly he “had to get to Cuba.”</p>
<p>In 1978, a researcher from the U.S. House Select Commission on Assassinations named Dan Hardway went to Mexico to investigate the JFK assassination. He was unable to interview Contreras despite several attempts, but in <a href="https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=149234#relPageId=1&tab=page">an influential report</a> warned his account should not be dismissed. </p>
<p>The New York Times reporter Shenon, who interviewed Oscar Contreras <a href="https://books.google.com.mx/books/about/A_Cruel_and_Shocking_Act.html?id=JRERAAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y">for a 2013 book on the JFK assassination</a>, also found Contreras credible. Shenon wrote that Contreras – whom he calls a “prominent journalist” – “went much further” in their interview than he had with the CIA, alleging “far more extensive contacts between Oswald and Cuban agents in Mexico.”</p>
<p>Dan Hardway, who is now a lawyer in West Virginia, still believes Contreras. After reading Shenon’s book, he reiterated in 2015 that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been <a href="https://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/">part of a wider Cuban intelligence web</a>. </p>
<h2>Hole in the web</h2>
<p>Óscar Contreras died in 2016, so I could not interview him myself. </p>
<p>But in my investigation, a minute detail of his biography grabbed my attention – an apparently overlooked contradiction that could undermine his entire story. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1296&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/368138/original/file-20201108-21-126szt1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1629&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A 1963 ‘Sol de Tampico’ column by Contreras.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Contreras’ telling, he fled the National Autonomous University campus and moved to Tampico around 1964. Yet Contreras also allegedly told his “editor” about his encounter with Oswald after the 1963 Kennedy assassination. </p>
<p>College newspapers aren’t common in Mexico, and Contreras was a law student. So how could he have had an editor in 1963? </p>
<p>I thought his hometown paper, El Sol de Tampico, might hold the answer. Digging through its archives, I found that the newspaper ran a Sunday gossip column in the early 1960s called “Crisol,” or “melting pot.” </p>
<p>Óscar Contreras became the reporter for “Crisol” on June 6, 1963, and continued writing the gossip column in September and October that year. </p>
<p>While Lee Harvey Oswald was in Mexico City, Contreras was 300 miles away in Tampico. In flamboyant prose, faded back issues of the local paper show, he chronicled the sumptuous wedding receptions, quinceañeras and yacht excursions of Tampico’s high society. </p>
<h2>Three dark days</h2>
<p>I believe the Sol de Tampico archives discredit Contereras’ account. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of a Spanish-language newspaper with Contrera's byline" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/370412/original/file-20201119-13-1uohb33.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=563&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Contreras wrote for Sol de Tampico on Oct. 6, 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sol de Tampico</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A political correspondent may live far from where his newspaper is published. But for a gossip columnist, that would be dereliction of duty. </p>
<p>This revelation plunges Oswald’s fall 1963 trip to Mexico back into the dark. </p>
<p>There are other conspiracy theories, including that Oswald had <a href="https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol3/html/HSCA_Vol3_0145b.htm">a Mexican mistress</a> who took him to a party of communists and spies. </p>
<p>But it’s more likely Mexico holds no hidden clues to JFK’s assassination. </p>
<p>Conspiracy theories offer assurances of depth and closure, a promise that the biggest enigma of the 20th century is solvable. But from what we know about what Oswald did and didn’t do in Mexico City, he was a volatile, disorganized loner who couldn’t even handle travel logistics. </p>
<p>JFK’s assassination is a cold case. And in Mexico, only exhausted leads remain.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: The lead photo caption has been changed for clarity.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gonzalo Soltero received funding from a Newton Advanced Fellowship by the British Academy.</span></em></p>In 1967 a Mexican reporter told the CIA he had met Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City just before the JFK assassination. New research and recently declassified intelligence pokes a hole in his story.Gonzalo Soltero, Professor of Narrative Analysis, School of Higher Studies, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396222020-07-02T14:04:43Z2020-07-02T14:04:43ZMexico City buried its rivers to prevent disease and unwittingly created a dry, polluted city where COVID-19 now thrives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345131/original/file-20200701-141278-xa8j31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5176%2C3445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Situated on a plateau and surrounded by mountains, Mexico City – seen here in a haze on May 20, 2018 – is a 'bowl' that traps smog and dust.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-Pollution/bf0cb5c6c58140afa6693a2e8c0157cd/75/0">AP Photo/Marco Ugarte</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Leer <a href="https://theconversation.com/contaminacion-el-silencioso-enemigo-de-la-cdmx-en-la-lucha-contra-el-covid-19-143504">en español</a></em></p>
<p>Mexico City is a dust bowl, a <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/312/31204702.pdf">polluted megalopolis</a> where breathing is hard and newly washed clothes hung out to dry turn stiff by evening. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic began clobbering this capital city, residents regularly wore face masks during the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/17/americas/mexico-city-pollution-in-photos-intl/index.html">frequent air quality emergencies</a> there. </p>
<p>Now Mexico City’s bad air pollution – which contributes to high rates of <a href="https://www.gob.mx/inecc/documentos/coronavirus-sars-cov-2-contaminacion-atmosferica-y-riesgos-a-la-salud">respiratory and cardiovascular diseases</a> – is making the metropolitan area’s 21 million people more vulnerable to the coronavirus. </p>
<p>Mexico City wasn’t always an ecological and health disaster. As the center of the Aztec empire, it was verdant and diverse. As late as the early 20th century, 45 rivers ran through the Mexican capital.</p>
<p>The decision to bury and pave over its rivers, creating today’s arid metropolis, was a 20th-century plan meant to protect residents from disease – specifically, cholera, <a href="http://oa.upm.es/57891/1/TFG_20_CODERCH_CARRETERO_PAULA.pdf">malaria and other waterborne illnesses brought on by frequent flooding</a>.</p>
<h2>Origins of Mexico City</h2>
<p>I’m a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LA4-pCYAAAAJ&hl=en">scholar who studies poverty</a> with a focus on urban areas, and Mexico City is my gray, concrete hometown. The relationship between its geography, history and health outcomes are relevant today, as the city struggles with its latest disease outbreak.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/312/31204702.pdf">Mexico City was founded</a> by the people now called Aztecs – but who called themselves Tenochcas – in 1325. The Aztecs built their city on a rock in Lake Texcoco, mostly because the more prime locations along the shore were already taken. </p>
<p>By 1427 the powerful Aztecs had defeated their lakeshore neighbors and built a shining capital that spanned the lake. The city, called Tenochtitlan, was built amid water by the development of “<a href="http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/handle/11191/5077">chinampas</a>” – small plots of lake filled in with debris, pottery and soil to create solid land, with channels flowing around them. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>The foremost chronicler of Spain’s colonization of Mexico, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm">Bernal Díaz del Castillo</a>, described Tenochtitlan as crisscrossed by engineering marvels like causeways and removable bridges, and full of “splendid” palaces. Diaz del Castillo reports that the city market was larger and better regulated than those of <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm">Constantinople and Rome</a>. As in the Roman empire, aqueducts supplied the city with <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm">fresh water</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345079/original/file-20200701-53-1eotava.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Replica of Tenochtitlan, with its causeways and canals.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/4ULeHK">Randal Sheppard/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tenochtitlan looked like Venice – gorgeous – and had the same health problems, including contaminated water, mosquitoes and unpleasant smells. But the Aztecs <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/312/31204702.pdf">managed the city well and prevented flooding</a>. Their dikes and waterways permitted a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40315074.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A92c9cb15fd681165ffef84e7676e5128">great diversity of plants and animals to flourish</a>, and the chinampa agricultural system – in which land was replenished with soil dredged from the lake bottom – was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40315074.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A92c9cb15fd681165ffef84e7676e5128">one of the most productive</a> the world has ever known. </p>
<h2>Spanish incompetence</h2>
<p>That good urban management <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/312/31204702.pdf">ended with the Spanish conquest in 1521</a>. Tenochtitlan was destroyed, its <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32474/32474-h/32474-h.htm">palaces and causeways turned to rubble at the bottom of the lake</a>.</p>
<p>The Spaniards did not understand the watery ecology of the area, nor <a href="https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/312/31204702.pdf">did they understand or respect</a> Aztec engineering. To rebuild their capital, they drained the lake. </p>
<p>This strategy led to both drought and an inadequate water supply for most of the year. Rainy season, however, brought <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40315074.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A92c9cb15fd681165ffef84e7676e5128">tremendous floods</a>. In 1629, the worst flood in Mexico City’s recorded history is said to have lasted five years and killed more than 30,000 people due to drowning and disease. Churches reportedly <a href="http://oa.upm.es/57891/1/TFG_20_CODERCH_CARRETERO_PAULA.pdf">held rooftop masses</a>. </p>
<p>Rainy season turned parts of the city turned into cesspools, spawning waterborne diseases like <a href="http://www.hmc.mil.ar/webResources/Documentos/inundaciones.pdf">cholera and malaria</a>, as well as meningitis. Gastrointestinal illnesses festered, too, because residents used Mexico City’s rivers for dumping garbage and sewage. <a href="http://oa.upm.es/57891/1/TFG_20_CODERCH_CARRETERO_PAULA.pdf">Human</a> and <a href="http://www.hmc.mil.ar/webResources/Documentos/inundaciones.pdf">animal</a> bodies floated in the stagnant waters, emitting a terrible stench.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345061/original/file-20200701-159785-1btcp7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canals in Xochimilco, a part of Mexico City that retains its ancient waterways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-aztec-canals-at-the-floating-gardens-of-xochimilco-the-news-photo/152201035?adppopup=true">Werner Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mexico goes deep</h2>
<p>Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1810. To deal once and for all with its flooding problems, city leaders decided in the 1890s to channel rain, flood waters and sewage away from the city via a <a href="https://blogdelagua.com/actualidad/inundaciones-en-mexico/">30-mile desagüe, or drainage channel</a>. </p>
<p>Around this time, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/40315074.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A92c9cb15fd681165ffef84e7676e5128">population of the capital began to explode</a>. Mexico City had 350,000 residents in 1900 and 3 million in 1950. By the <a href="http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/handle/11191/5077">1930s</a>, its novel sanitation system was already insufficient. Plus, residents were still using Mexico City’s many rivers for <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/entrada-de-opinion/colaboracion/mochilazo-en-el-tiempo/nacion/sociedad/2017/06/21/los-rios-de-la">washing clothes, as garbage pits and as sewers</a>. </p>
<p>In 1938, the architect Carlos Contreras proposed <a href="http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/handle/11191/5077">enclosing</a> three polluted rivers – the Piedad, the Consulado and the Verónica – and turning them into one giant viaduct to <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/entrada-de-opinion/colaboracion/mochilazo-en-el-tiempo/nacion/sociedad/2017/06/21/los-rios-de-la">prevent flooding, disease and death</a>. Political conditions did not allow this idea to move forward at the time, but the idea of <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/entrada-de-opinion/colaboracion/mochilazo-en-el-tiempo/nacion/sociedad/2017/06/21/los-rios-de-la">putting Mexico City’s filthy waterways into enormous pipes</a> and burying them stuck. </p>
<p>Over the following decades, rivers began to be put underground. Between 1947 and 1952 most of Mexico City’s 45 rivers were <a href="http://oa.upm.es/57891/1/TFG_20_CODERCH_CARRETERO_PAULA.pdf">channeled into giant tubes, buried and paved over</a>. Today, these rivers are visible only in the names <a href="http://zaloamati.azc.uam.mx/handle/11191/5077">of the streets that run over them</a>: Rio Mixcoac Avenue, Rio Churubusco Avenue and others.</p>
<h2>Smog bowl</h2>
<p>This system gave mid-century Mexico City enough sewer capacity, roads and buildings to serve its population. The foul smell and unsanitary conditions also diminished, because people couldn’t dump garbage into covered waterways. </p>
<p>But without its rivers, Mexico City dried up and grew dusty. And because of its geography – <a href="https://en.mxcity.mx/2016/04/mexico-citys-mountains/">located</a> on a plateau, surrounded by mountains – the dust was unable to escape. Mexico City is in a bowl that traps whatever floats in the air. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C6%2C4440%2C2967&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C6%2C4440%2C2967&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/345073/original/file-20200701-13398-bqmlmo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruins of Teotihuacan, outside Mexico City, March 19, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Virus-Outbreak-Mexico-Equinox-Closure/4059b21152624ee09a59daf200a6b542/12/0">AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Starting in the 1980s, the number of cars <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096669231500023X">grew into the millions</a>, trapping pollution too. Today, Mexico City is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/16/scary-images-mexico-citys-pollution-emergency/">notorious for its smog</a> and for the terrible <a href="https://www.iqair.com/blog/air-quality/air-pollution-particles-in-hearts">health consequences</a> pollution brings, including asthma and heart disease. </p>
<p>The coronavirus outbreak wasn’t caused by polluted air. But the city’s bad air quality – together with <a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2009/05/25/capital/043n1cap">overcrowding and other poverty-related factors</a> – creates the conditions for COVID-19 to severely sicken and kill more people.</p>
<p>In trying to eliminate waterborne illness, the Mexican capital ended up helping an airborne virus find more hosts. It’s an irony of history the Aztecs would surely mourn.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: A photo caption incorrectly dating Teotihuacan to the Aztec people has been corrected.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elena Delavega does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Aztecs had a shining city on a lake, with canals, causeways and aqueducts – until the Spanish came. Mexico City is still suffering the consequences of their bad public health decisions.Elena Delavega, Associate Professor of Social Work, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057222019-09-25T22:14:57Z2019-09-25T22:14:57ZAir pollution in global megacities linked to children’s cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s and death<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293878/original/file-20190924-51434-168bxr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C89%2C3976%2C2574&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Severe air pollution can speed up neurodegeneration when the brain is at the peak of its development — during childhood. Pictured here, a child in Beijing.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In megacities across the world, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s40641-016-0032-z">Mexico City, Jakarta, New Delhi, Beijing, Los Angeles, Paris and London</a>, humans are polluting air at a rate that <a href="https://www.who.int/airpollution/en/">Earth can no longer sustain</a>. </p>
<p>Most human-made air pollution is like <a href="http://www.clinsci.org/content/115/6/175.figures-only">dust, as tiny as the diameter of hair</a> (particulate matter) or even smaller (ultrafine particulate matter). The link to respiratory conditions such as pneumonia, bronchitis and asthma is well known. Almost one million children die from pneumonia each year, <a href="https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Clear_the_Air_for_Children_Executive_summary_ENG.pdf">more than half of which are directly related to air pollution</a>. </p>
<p>Being so small, particulate matter can also travel <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/113/39/10797">from our lungs into the blood and circulate into the brain</a>. Once there, it can promote brain inflammation, which contributes to cell loss within the central nervous system, and likely to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299999970_How_Air_Pollution_Alters_Brain_Development_The_Role_of_Neuroinflammation">neurodegeneration, cognitive deficits and increased risk for dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease</a>.</p>
<p>While mild neurogeneration is a natural aspect of aging, it can be worsened and quickened by neuroinflammation from severe air pollution. Even worse, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00613/full">severe air pollution can speed up neurodegeneration when the brain is at the peak of its development</a> — during childhood. </p>
<p>That’s right — millions of children around the world currently breathe air that may put them at risk of premature cognitive decline, and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>This is the story of how we continue to poison our children’s brains and cut their lives short.</p>
<h2>Unexplained deaths of children</h2>
<p>In the late 1990s, neuropathologist and pediatrician <a href="https://apps.umt.edu/directory/details/d5e922615467a007d31cf08f61451018">Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas</a>, reported a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ana_Calderon6/publication/51366231_Brain_Inflammation_and_Alzheimer%27s-Like_Pathology_in_Individuals_Exposed_to_Severe_Air_Pollution/links/0c9605296dad95616f000000.pdf">connection between early signs of neurodegeneration and air pollution</a> by examining brain tissues in adults, children and dogs after unexplained sudden “accidental” deaths. </p>
<p>Those brains had only one thing in common — they were from residents of Mexico City, one of the most polluted megacities in the world. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293880/original/file-20190924-51438-vlnpul.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Around 300 million children live in areas, such as Mexico City, where outdoor air pollution exceeds international guidelines by at least six times.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Further study showed what became a frequent grim picture in scientific reports. Microscopic images of unhealthy brain slices in diseased animals and humans showed particulate matter and ultrafine particulate matter as tiny dark spots surrounded by inflamed tissue. </p>
<p>Around the inflamed spots you can sometimes see strips that resemble scars but other times you can see pinkish stems. These are the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Angelica_Gonzalez-Maciel/publication/5503901_Long-term_Air_Pollution_Exposure_Is_Associated_with_Neuroinflammation_an_Altered_Innate_Immune_Response_Disruption_of_the_Blood-Brain_Barrier_Ultrafine_Particulate_Deposition_and_Accumulation_of_Amylo/links/54230f580cf290c9e3ae263b.pdf">amyloid plaques frequently found after death in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease</a>.</p>
<p>I joined Lilian’s team as an <a href="https://carleton.ca/neuroscience/people/amedeo-dangiulli/">expert in cognitive developmental neuroscience and neuroimaging</a>. We looked for signs of premature cognitive decline in living residents, using behavioural tests and taking various types of images of target brain regions. </p>
<h2>Substantial cognitive decline in kids’ brains</h2>
<p>We found that children from Mexico City had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.ant.2018.10.008">substantial cognitive decline</a> as compared to population norms, and as compared to other children of similar age, sex and family and neighbourhood backgrounds who lived in less polluted areas. </p>
<p>We were also able to pinpoint unusual cognitive deficits to <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51750512_Exposure_to_severe_urban_air_pollution_influences_cognitive_outcomes_brain_volume_and_systemic_inflammation_in_clinically_healthy_children">key developing areas of the brain</a>: the prefrontal, temporal and parietal lobes of the cortex. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2011.03.007">Atypical cognition was also found in the auditory brain stem</a>, possibly relating to speech and language developmental deficits. Neuroimages in children were consistent with <a href="https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-alzheimers-disease/jad120610">most serious damage being in the white matter</a> — the parts of the brain providing the connections for electrical communication. In many cases we were able to show that <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21955814">in those Mexico City children, neuroinflammation was much worse than normal</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/293881/original/file-20190924-51434-11h40az.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Polluted megacities include those such as Paris, London and Los Angeles. Here, traffic is shown in the city of London, UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Today, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00613">reports of similar findings from other megacities and from other researchers</a> show a considerable agreement: the brains of millions of children are being damaged by air pollution and protecting them should be of pressing importance for public health.</p>
<h2>Public health crisis requiring immediate action</h2>
<p>The good news: It is still possible to clear the air of cities, both indoors and outdoors, and <a href="https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/Clear_the_Air_for_Children_Executive_summary_ENG.pdf">minimize children’s exposure</a>. </p>
<p>However, our attitudes must now <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2018.00095">shift from caution and waiting to immediate action</a>. We need to commit to hard choices that may go against the convenience and ease of modern life we are accustomed to. For example, relying on cars and other combustion-based technologies. </p>
<p>If things are to change, the <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=uFTiBwAAQBAJ&vq=Colleen+Moore+air+pollution&dq=Colleen+Moore+air+pollution&source=gbs_navlinks_s">responsibility lies with the individual “me” and “you,” as well as with our collective society and institutions</a>. We will never make it if one side of this equation continues to download responsibility to the other.</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30505-6">Alzheimer’s disease and other most hideous neurodegenerative diseases (dementias) are linked with all levels of air pollution </a>, in people of all ages. Such diseases are <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-top-10-causes-of-death">among the top 10 mass killers globally</a> and there is still no cure for them.</p>
<p>The science is in. Children are now rising up globally <a href="https://qz.com/1714484/greta-thunberg-files-climate-lawsuit-after-passionate-un-speech/">to defend their rights to a healthy life, on the global stage</a>. We must respond, with concrete changes to our habits.</p>
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<p>[ <em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105722/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amedeo D'Angiulli has received funding from UNICEF, Carleton University's Faculty of Science & International Research Seed Grants, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada & the International Development Research Centre, UNESCO International Bureau of Education, and the International Brain Research Organization.</span></em></p>Investigation of the brains of children and young adults who died suddenly in Mexico City revealed amyloid plaques similar to those found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.Amedeo D'Angiulli, Professor of Developmental Cognitive and Social Neuroscience, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1093302019-01-08T23:33:45Z2019-01-08T23:33:45ZThe Oscars: what you may have missed in ‘Roma’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252757/original/file-20190107-32154-whbv3h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics and audiences of the Oscar-nominated film Roma may be missing important Mexican historical and cultural facts.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.romamovie.com/">Roma</a> — Alfonso Cuarón’s powerful film about daily life in Mexico in the 1970s — has been nominated for 10 Oscars, including the top prize as best picture of the year. Cuarón has been praised for both his technical and storytelling skills and members of <a href="https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/2019">the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences</a> have rewarded him with nominations for direction, cinematography and original screenplay.</p>
<p>Despite its popularity — Roma had limited theatrical release but is available for streaming on <a href="https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80240715">Netflix</a> — the film contains some subtle but important elements that have been largely ignored by critics so far.</p>
<p>Two of these elements are Mexico’s political context in the early 1970s and the ongoing conditions that have characterized domestic workers’ lives since. </p>
<p>The main character of <em>Roma</em> is Cleo (played by Yalitza Aparicio, who was nominated for best actress), a domestic worker based on a woman named Liboria Rodríguez (known as Libo) who worked for Cuarón’s family when he was a child.</p>
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<h2>Who were <em>Los Halcones</em>?</h2>
<p>Cuarón situates <em>Roma’s</em> characters amid significant historical events: the fight of some Mexicans for social progress and their opposition to a political, authoritarian regime that worked to maintain its privileges through various means.</p>
<p>One of these means is exemplified in the film by the character Fermín — Cleo’s boyfriend (played by Jorge Antonio Guerrero) who belongs to the paramilitary group <em>Los Halcones</em> (The Hawks).</p>
<p>We know now by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">various direct sources</a> and United States government declassified documents that high-ranking Mexican government officials <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-18.pdf">secretly organized</a>, financed, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-35.pdf">trained and armed</a> various groups, including <em>Los Halcones</em>, to help quash social movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones</em> were composed of around 2,000 young men, aged 18 to 29, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">distributed in squads</a> of 200 members each.</p>
<p><a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-20.pdf">The squads’ leaders were middle-class university students</a> who, for their participation, received free education, weekly stipends and the promise of a bright future in the ruling Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI).</p>
<p>The assailants and hit-men were <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">gang members</a> and <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-38.pdf">working class</a> and unemployed young men. They were paid half of what the leaders received.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones</em> <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-35.pdf">were also trained by Mexican military and police personnel</a> who, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-17.pdf">subsidized by USAID</a>, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-01.pdf">had previously received training</a> at the International Police Academy in Washington.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/252756/original/file-20190107-32145-4g9xh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A scene from the award-winning ‘Roma.’</span>
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<h2>An attack on Mexican democracy</h2>
<p>On June 10, 1971, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">around 10,000 demonstrators</a>, <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/">mainly students</a>, marched to demand improvements to Mexico’s democratic, economic and social conditions.</p>
<p>In <em>Roma</em>, Cleo and others pass these demonstrators on their way to a furniture store. They also pass, in a depiction of real life, a long row of riot police trucks and idle police officers, while <em>Halcones</em> patiently wait at the corner.</p>
<p>Armed with canes and M1 and M2 rifles, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM"><em>Halcones</em> attacked demonstrators</a>, producing the second bloodiest event in modern Mexican history (<a href="https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/roma-corpus-christi-student-massacre-el-halconazo.html"><em>El Halconazo</em></a>), only after the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7646473.stm">Tlatelolco massacre of October 1968</a>.</p>
<p>It is estimated that around 120 people were killed and hundreds more injured, including <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">children, women and seniors</a>. Although the military and uniformed police <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO_1E1cwzmM">knew beforehand about the attack</a>, they <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-40.pdf">stood by and did nothing</a>.</p>
<h2>Masculinity and violence</h2>
<p>Fermín belongs to the second-tier group of <em>Los Halcones</em>. In the hotel, he confesses to Cleo: “I owe my life to martial arts [to <em>Halcones</em>]. I grew up with nothing, you know?”</p>
<p>Portraying the real <em>Halcones</em> youth, Fermín’s participation offered him certain social mobility but only in exchange for committing atrocities.</p>
<p>Some young men’s allegiance to <em>Los Halcones</em> and their corrupt decisions were thus mediated by class aspirations, ideology and violence.</p>
<p><em>Los Halcones’</em> violence also <a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB91/mexstu-38.pdf">manifested in gender violence.</a> This is depicted in <em>Roma</em> when Fermín dismisses his paternity and threatens to beat Cleo and their unborn daughter if she insists on looking for him.</p>
<p>Moreover, despite his low-class background, Fermín ends the scene yelling “<em>gata</em>” at Cleo, an upper class-based insult aimed only at domestic servants, reflecting the latter’s low ascribed social status.</p>
<h2>Domestic workers in Mexico</h2>
<p>A second element that has not been widely discussed, which <em>Roma</em> touches on, is the historical conditions of domestic workers.</p>
<p>As of June 2018, there were <a href="http://www.beta.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/boletines/2018/enoe_ie/enoe_ie2018_08.pdf">2.2 million domestic workers in Mexico</a>. Around 95 per cent are women, mostly young and middle-aged (<a href="https://www.conapred.org.mx/index.php?contenido=noticias&id=5427&id_opcion=446">some are even children</a>).</p>
<p>In 2010, <a href="https://www.inegi.org.mx/programas/ccpv/2010/">58 per cent of Indigenous women in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area were domestic workers</a>. Many migrated from the countryside to the city. This means that, as Indigenous migration researcher <a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-39292013000200004">Séverine Durin asserts</a>, domestic work is strongly shaped by ethnicity.</p>
<p>It is not a coincidence then that Cuarón’s former nanny Libo or the characters Cleo and Adela in <em>Roma</em> are (young) Indigenous women.</p>
<h2>Disadvantageous labour conditions</h2>
<p>Mexican laws <a href="https://legalzone.com.mx/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Descargar-pdf-Ley-Federal-del-Trabajo-legalzone-m%C3%A9xico.pdf">do not offer domestic workers the same rights and benefits</a> that other workers enjoy, such as paid sick days and holidays. They can also be dismissed without warning at any time.</p>
<p>Only as recently as December 2018, <a href="http://www.internet2.scjn.gob.mx/red2/comunicados/noticia.asp?id=5806">the Mexican Supreme Court determined</a> that it is unconstitutional for employers to deny domestic workers access to social security, meaning mainly access to public health services.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0185-39292013000200004">It is commonplace for domestic workers</a> to face low wages, long working hours and no holidays. Some also experience humiliation, mistreatment and discrimination for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/10/empleadas-domesticas-ciudad-de-mexico-luchan-trato-digno">speaking their Indigenous language</a>, wearing traditional clothes, <a href="http://www.revistaterritorio.mx/el-parque-de-las-gatas.html">practising cultural customs</a> and for their physical traits.</p>
<p>Others experience forced confinement or <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/03/trabajadoras-domesticas-impunidad-delitos/">sexual abuse</a> by the men of the family or teenage sons. Yet, domestic workers are expected to thank their employers for the “opportunity” to have a job.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.conapred.org.mx/index.php?contenido=noticias&id=5427&id_opcion=446">Only one in 10 women file a complaint</a> when they encounter a problem with their employers. </p>
<p>Domestic workers with children also need to make extraordinary arrangements for their own children to be taken care of, meaning prolonged separation many times while they take care of other families’ children. Their caring and affection not only become commodified, but also dislocated.</p>
<h2>Not really part of the family</h2>
<p>Some employers consider domestic workers as “part of the family.” However, uneven power relations, class differentials, discrimination and racism make them not really part of the family.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAa9dueHtVI">Cuarón mentioned</a> that he was forced to recognize several decades later, and only after he started working on <em>Roma</em>, that Libo was, first, a woman, and second, an Indigenous woman. He then realized that Libo belongs to a “world of affective needs, a world of sexual desires,” and also to “a more dispossessed group, a world of injustice.”</p>
<p>In <em>Roma</em>, the family members are unaware of the domestic workers’ social and personal lives.</p>
<p>When Cleo is taken to the delivery room, the grandmother, Teresa, is asked by a nurse about Cleo’s second last name, her date of birth and if she has insurance. But Teresa cannot answer those questions.</p>
<p>Cleo picks up after the family dog’s, feeds the family, prepares the kids for school, puts them to bed, washes and irons the family’s clothes and cleans the house. Still, the grandmother ignores everything about Cleo despite living in the “same” house (usually, domestic workers sleep and even eat apart from the family).</p>
<p>Cleo is “part of the family” but she is not really part of the family.</p>
<h2>Daily violence</h2>
<p>Overall, <em>Roma</em> contains various stories that subtly unveil different forms of violence: poverty, social exclusion and gender-based violence promoted by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/17/difference-between-sexism-and-misogyny">sexist and misogynistic</a> forms of masculinity.</p>
<p>Moreover, domestic workers’ quiet but endless work, which in <em>Roma</em> takes over half of the film, hinders uneven power relations mediated by class, gender, age, affection, ethnicity, race and the urban/rural divide.</p>
<p>These factors intersect to maintain domestic workers, mainly (Indigenous) women, in subordinate positions. They are conveniently imagined as “part of the family,” but they are never really part of the family, neither in Mexico, nor <a href="https://utorontopress.com/ca/not-one-of-the-family-2">in Canada</a>, nor anywhere else in the world.</p>
<p><em>This is a corrected version of a story originally published Jan. 8, 2019. The original story said: “in 2010, 58 per cent of Indigenous women were domestic workers.” It should have said: “In 2010, 58 per cent of Indigenous women in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area were domestic workers.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alejandro Hernandez currently volunteers as Board of Directors member at the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and is a member of the Canadian Sociological Association and the Latin American Studies Association. All opinions, however, are personal. Alejandro was also awarded a Vanier scholarship (SSHRC) and a Conacyt scholarship.</span></em></p>Director Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Roma’ has received 10 Oscar nominations. Here, a sociologist explains the hidden historical and cultural context of the film.Alejandro Hernandez, Instructor and PhD candidate in Sociology and Political Economy, Carleton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1053432018-11-29T21:16:28Z2018-11-29T21:16:28ZLópez Obrador takes power in Mexico after an unstable transition and broken campaign promises<p>Five months after he won <a href="https://centralelectoral.ine.mx/2018/07/08/confirma-ine-resultados-de-eleccion-presidencial-2018/">a landslide victory in</a> Mexico’s <a href="https://www.ine.mx/voto-y-elecciones/elecciones-2018/">2018 presidential election</a> on promises to “<a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">transform</a>” the country, leftist <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/">Andrés Manuel López Obrador</a> was sworn into office on Dec. 1. </p>
<p>The prolonged transition period – currently one of the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.com.mx/2018/08/08/por-que-amlo-durara-menos-de-seis-anos-como-presidente_a_23498739/">the world’s lengthiest</a> – gave Mexicans a preview of what presidential leadership will look like under López Obrador: aggressive.</p>
<p>Between its July 1 election and Dec. 1 inauguration, Mexico was effectively been run by parallel governments with <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-45027501">very different agendas</a>. President Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico’s conservative and highly unpopular outgoing leader, all but <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/11/27/mexico/1543340967_772231.html">disappeared</a> from the public eye, even as tensions with the United States over the treatment of Central American migrants run high. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, López Obrador was increasingly visible, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dozens-of-migrants-disappear-in-mexico-as-central-american-caravan-pushes-northward-106287">offering asylum and temporary work permits</a> to refugees, pushing his legislative priorities and deciding the fate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/16/world/americas/16reuters-mexico-politics-referendum.html">of major infrastructure projects</a> – though, strictly speaking, he could not follow through on any of these decisions as president-elect.</p>
<p>López Obrador’s disregard for constitutional restrictions before the official transfer of power has many political analysts in the country, <a href="https://theconversation.com/andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-was-elected-to-transform-mexico-can-he-do-it-99176">myself included</a>, concerned about how he will use his executive power in office. </p>
<h2>A regressive transformation of Mexico</h2>
<p>As presdident-elect, López Obrador unilaterally called two “people’s polls,” circumventing a <a href="https://t.co/fm41zAFPfh">constitutional</a> requirement that all popular referenda be approved by the Supreme Court and administered by the national election authority.</p>
<p>In October, his Morena party hired a private polling firm to ask Mexicans <a href="https://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/jose-woldenberg/nacion/deberia-suspenderse">in 538 towns near the nation’s capital</a> to vote on whether to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-29/mexico-votes-to-scrap-13-billion-airport-in-amlo-s-first-test">cancel</a> Mexico City’s controversial, extravagantly over-budget and <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-citys-new-airport-is-an-environmental-disaster-but-it-could-become-a-huge-national-park-95992">environmentally disastrous</a> – but much-needed – new international airport.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/mexicans-vote-to-cancel-13-3-billion-mexico-city-airport-project-1540789177">Seventy percent</a> of the nearly 1.1 million people who cast their ballots wanted to scrap the $13.3 billion project, which López Obrador had harshly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-airport/mexico-presidential-front-runner-plans-steps-to-halt-corrupt-new-airport-idUSKBN1GY3E9">criticized</a> on the campaign trail. </p>
<p>Opposition lawmakers and protesters retorted that Mexican law requires a 40 percent voter turnout for a popular referendum to be considered binding. López Obrador polled 1.1 million people in a country of 130 million. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, the president-elect immediately announced the termination of the airport project in favor of revamping an unused military air base north of the capital. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.forbes.com.mx/ingenieros-a-favor-de-seguir-la-construccion-del-nuevo-aeropuerto/">engineers</a>, <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=39800">academics</a> and the <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/10/23/actualidad/1540328737_866495.html">business</a> sector also denounced the decision to scrap the new airport, the Mexican peso plummeted amid investor concern about national stability.</p>
<p>López Obrador responded to criticism with a populist evasion, saying simply that “<a href="http://www.milenio.com/politica/el-pueblo-es-el-que-manda-amlo-a-jp-morgan">the people are wise</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/248040/original/file-20181129-170226-luhp8y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A ‘national consultation’ on the fate of Mexico City’s new airport polled just 1.1 million people in 535 towns.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mexico-New-Airport/d888d0a26efe4d1581d9f201aa2747be/19/0">AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A month later, López Obrador’s transitional government called another unconstitutional referendum to decide the fate of another major infrastructure project. In late November, <a href="https://github.com/segasi/analisis_votacion_consulta_10_programas">900,000 voters</a> determined that the Mexican government should build the “<a href="https://noticieros.televisa.com/historia/que-preguntas-incluidas-consulta-ciudadana-tren-maya/">Maya Train</a>,” a 932-mile rail line that would connect five southern Mexican states and the Yucatan Peninsula.</p>
<p>Not <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/nacion/sociedad/se-debe-consultar-pueblos-indigenas-sobre-tren-maya-cndh">consulted prior to the referendum</a>: the Mayan communities traversed by the proposed railroad and who, by <a href="https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_ILO_CODE:C169">law</a>, must be included in all decision-making that impacts their indigenous territories.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, López Obrador has declared that the rail project will be completed by the end of his six-year term.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s powerful presidency</h2>
<p>López Obrador’s misuse of direct democracy to expand his executive powers sends worrisome signals about how he will govern Mexico. </p>
<p>The Mexican presidency is already an <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/El_sistema_pol%C3%ADtico_mexicano.html?id=2FpMAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y">enormously powerful office</a>. It was designed that way in the 1920s by the authoritarian Revolutionary Institutional Party, known as the PRI, which ruled the country <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WyKyD7on22QC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">virtually uncontested</a> for nearly the entire 20th century. </p>
<p>After 80 years in power, the PRI lost the presidency in 2000 but was restored to power with President Peña Nieto in 2012. </p>
<p>López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor who has unsuccessfully run for president twice before, won this year in large part because he promised to make Mexico’s centralized, stagnant political system more inclusive and consultative.</p>
<p>He pledged to <a href="https://elpais.com/internacional/2018/06/05/mexico/1528152744_392051.html">root out corruption</a>, <a href="http://www.milenio.com/politica/abrazos-balazos-amlo-promete-reducir-violencia">reduce violence</a>, <a href="https://www.telesurtv.net/news/lopez-obrador-estatus-contratos-pemex-cfe-20180525-0018.html">restructure Mexico’s energy sector</a>, respect the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mexico-seeks-to-become-country-of-refuge-as-us-cracks-down-on-migrants-97668">human rights of migrants</a> and <a href="https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/politica/Las-propuestas-economicas-de-Lopez-Obrador-20180131-0095.html">spur growth</a> in the country’s most impoverished areas. </p>
<p>Legislatively, López Obrador will have the power to push through his transformative agenda. </p>
<p>His political party, Morena, secured majorities in both the Mexican <a href="http://www.puntoporpunto.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/INTEGRACION-LEGISLATURA-FEDERAL-DATOS-COMPUTOS-DISTRITALES-version-completa-09072018.pdf">Senate</a> and lower <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/383608686/Integracion-Legislatura-Federal-Datos-Computos-Distritales-Version-Completa-09072018">Chamber of Deputies</a> in July’s election. That also gives López Obrador the right to <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/javier-risco/andres-manuel-y-la-suprema-corte">replace</a> up to two justices on Mexico’s Supreme Court.</p>
<h2>Extreme austerity</h2>
<p>But some recently announced policies have surprised Mexicans who thought they elected a leftist <a href="https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/morena-lopez-obrador-amlo-mexico-elections">champion of workers rights and social inclusion</a>.</p>
<p>As part of his <a href="https://www.animalpolitico.com/2018/07/amlo-austeridad-corrupcion-puntos/">plan to slash public spending and eradicate corruption</a>, López Obrador has released an austerity budget that includes laying off 70 percent of non-unionized Mexican government workers. An estimated <a href="https://twitter.com/Viri_Rios/status/1018880589850701824">276,290</a> public employees will lose their jobs, according to Viridiana Ríos, an <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/person/viridiana-rios">expert</a> on the Mexican economy.</p>
<p>Bureaucrats who remain will be asked to work from Monday through Saturday for over eight hours a day. </p>
<p>López Obrador justifies the downsizing by quoting Benito Juárez, the celebrated indigenous president who ruled Mexico from 1858 to 1872. Juárez thought public officials should live in “<a href="https://www.jornada.com.mx/2018/07/16/opinion/019a2pol#">honorable modesty</a>,” avoiding idleness and excess. </p>
<p>Few doubt that Mexico’s government bureaucracy is bloated, and that expunging the <a href="https://theconversation.com/governors-gone-wild-mexico-faces-a-lost-generation-of-corrupt-leaders-76858">rampant corruption of Peña Nieto’s PRI party</a> will require serious restructuring. However, the working conditions López Obrador proposes violate <a href="https://t.co/fm41zAFPfh">Mexican labor standards</a>, which guarantee job security and an eight-hour work day. </p>
<p>There’s a logistical problem here, too. Implementing López Obrador’s ambitious policy agenda asks a lot of Mexico’s federal government. The president-elect now intends to transform his nation with an underpaid, overworked and understaffed bureaucracy.</p>
<h2>Broken promises</h2>
<p>López Obrador has angered other supporters by breaking his campaign <a href="https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-44681165">pledge</a> to stop using the Mexican armed forces to fight the drug war in Mexico.</p>
<p>Rather than using soldiers to fight cartels, as Mexico has done since 2006, he said he would professionalize the Mexican police and grant <a href="https://theconversation.com/amnesty-for-drug-traffickers-thats-one-mexican-presidential-candidates-pitch-to-voters-96063">pardons</a> to low-level drug traffickers willing to leave their illicit business.</p>
<p>The security plan was underdeveloped, and when pressed for details on the campaign trail, López Obrador simply responded that Mexico needs “justice,” not “revenge.”</p>
<p>But voters recognized the sound logic behind his diagnosis. Numerous <a href="https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=25468">studies</a> show that Mexico’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-record-29-000-mexicans-were-murdered-last-year-can-soldiers-stop-the-bloodshed-90574">military crackdown on organized crime</a> actually caused violence to skyrocket. </p>
<p>The number of criminal groups operating in Mexico surged from 20 in 2007, the year after the full-frontal war on drugs began, to <a href="https://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/politica/el-panorama-la-violencia-en-mexico">200 in 2011</a>, according to the Mexican university CIDE. By last year, Mexico had <a href="https://www.sintesis.mx/2018/07/30/2017-85-homicidios-diarios-mexico-inegi/">85 homicides a day</a> – the highest murder rate since record-keeping began in the 1980s. </p>
<p>López Obrador has since radically changed his strategy for “pacifying” Mexico.</p>
<p>On Nov. 14, the president-elect released a <a href="https://lopezobrador.org.mx/2018/11/14/presidente-electo-presenta-plan-nacional-de-paz-y-seguridad-2018-2024/">National Security Plan</a> that continues to rely on the Mexican armed forces for fighting crime. Lawmakers from his Morena party have introduced a <a href="http://gaceta.diputados.gob.mx/Gaceta/64/2018/nov/20181120-II.html#Iniciativa225">bill</a> to create a National Guard, a new crime-fighting force that would combine military and civilian police under a single military command. </p>
<p>Mexican political pundit Denise Dresser has <a href="https://twitter.com/denisedresserg/status/1062974872584966144?lang=en">dubbed</a> López Obrador’s strategy as the current cartel war “on steroids.” Security expert Alejandro Madrazo wrote in The New York Times that the decision is a “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/11/28/opinion-lopez-obrador-guardia-nacional/">historic error</a>” that squanders the opportunity to have a national dialogue about the role of the military in law enforcement.</p>
<p>Mexicans gave López Obrador a mandate to revolutionize the government so that it finally works for them. His power grabs, austerity budget and U-turn on security are early signs that he may not deliver the transformation they so eagerly await.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105343/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Luis Gómez Romero does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexicans want leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador to transform the country. But the months leading up to his inauguration sent worrying signs about how he he will use the massive power of his office.Luis Gómez Romero, Senior Lecturer in Human Rights, Constitutional Law and Legal Theory, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1023662018-09-13T14:50:03Z2018-09-13T14:50:03ZUrbanites can be divided into six different tribes, to help make cities fit for all<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236236/original/file-20180913-177965-fvgsys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Riccardo Di Clemente et al/Shutterstock. </span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whether tapping a contactless card to take the subway, buying a gift for a loved one or using a smart phone to find the way home, your everyday actions leave behind breadcrumbs of <a href="https://theconversation.com/your-personal-space-is-no-longer-physical-its-a-global-network-of-data-97140">digital information</a>. When these traces are collected and analysed en masse, they can help urban planners to pick up on the daily rhythms of the life of a city and uncover trends about the people who live there.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05690-8">recent study</a>, we developed a new mathematical framework which extracts various spending habits or lifestyles from the digital traces left by credit cards and mobile phone data in Mexico City. We discovered that purchase habits not only related to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income and mobility – they also related to the places people visit, and the people they call. </p>
<p>Over the past decade, smart phone data has helped researchers to understand and plan cities. For example, location data is used in transport planning to identify which stations and routes are busiest at different times of the day. For example, <a href="https://theconversation.com/recalculating-by-not-driving-the-optimal-route-youre-causing-traffic-jams-56135">scientists have found</a> that people don’t necessarily take the optimal route to their destination – instead, they have a favourite route for trips they perform routinely, and a few alternative routes which they take less frequently.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236197/original/file-20180913-177962-gbiszu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Taking the scenic route today.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/coyoacan-mexico-city-2017-old-car-769071046?src=ZU8IhrZ67KY3SS6f7IRXng-1-66">Roberto Michel/Shutterstock.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, credit card data and spending behaviour data have been used from the retail companies to build a profile of consumers, based on their set of purchases. This is illustrated by the parable of the <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/15/beer_diapers/">beer and nappies</a>. As it turns out, on Friday evenings, young men who buy nappies also have a predisposition to buy beer – this group became parents.</p>
<p>When analysed across the years, these digital traces can help scientists and governments to understand at an unprecedented scale how societies in different parts of the world cope with major events, such as recessions or major policy changes. </p>
<h2>The six tribes</h2>
<p>From the detected spending habits, we identify six groups or “tribes” while protecting people’s privacy by aggregating the data and ensuring they were anonymous. Each of these groups has a core purchase, which is the most frequent of their spending activities, indicated by the yellow arrows in the figure below.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236050/original/file-20180912-133883-1qv68p9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our six lifestyle groups: the colour of the arrows represents the frequency of the transactions, from yellow (most frequent) to red (less frequent).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05690-8">Riccardo Di Clemente et al.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “commuters” tribe is mainly made up of adult men who live far from the city centre. They commute by car (paying tolls), earn above average incomes and enjoy eating at restaurants.</p>
<p>Middle-aged women dominate the “household” tribe and tend to have the least expenditure and mobility. Their core transaction is grocery shopping, they have lower incomes and live in the suburbs. On average, members of this group receive more phone calls from the other tribes. </p>
<p>Young people are split between two tribes. The “young”, who are under 30 years old, live in the city centre, mainly use taxis as means of transportation and have an average income. </p>
<p>The second group, called “high tech”, is slightly older, with an average age of 35. Their core transactions are on technology such as smart phones and computers. They could be young professionals, since they have higher than average expenditure, a wide range of contacts in their mobile phones and do most of their activities downtown.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=384&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236200/original/file-20180913-177962-10nillq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=483&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">¡Salud!</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/friends-toasting-saying-cheers-holding-tropical-780298639?src=SNknUzcdM127fAAdyB5fzw-1-58">Cabeca de Marmore/Shutterstock.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The “dinner out” group lives closer to the city centre. Their core transactions are restaurants. They also have more contacts in their social network than average. </p>
<p>We also created an “average” group from a random sample of citizens, to use as a benchmark, against which we could compare the spending habits and socio-demographic information of the other tribes.</p>
<h2>Helping urban challenges</h2>
<p>By generating useful information from these digital traces, we hope to help cities to embrace the <a href="https://theconversation.com/are-we-ready-for-the-digital-tsunami-100879">digital revolution</a> and resolve important urban issues, such as how to make cities more inclusive. </p>
<p>For example, the commuters tribe may be hit hardest by fuel price increases which may affect their spending and commuting. The creation of inexpensive and efficient public transport systems may be an important investment in urban areas, especially those where low-income residential areas and job opportunities are not in proximity. And to help the household tribe, we could consider introducing nutrition subsidies – programmes to incentivise low-cost grocery stores in areas where it’s difficult to find affordable, good quality food. </p>
<p>What’s more, our study shows that it is possible to gather information about daily mobility, social contacts and lifestyles by collecting the data that people already produce, rather than undertaking surveys which are expensive, time consuming and very limited in sample size. </p>
<p>This kind of analysis can help city authorities make informed decisions based on data about an unprecedented number of people and lead to more tailored policy to the specific needs of different groups and lifestyles.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102366/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Riccardo Di Clemente received funding from the Gates Foundation (grant OPP1141325) and United Nations Foundation (grant UNF-15-738), and as Newton International Fellow of the Royal Society acknowledges support from the Royal Society, the British Academy, and the Academy of Medical Sciences (Newton International Fellowship, NF170505). Riccardo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marta Gonzalez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Big data from smart phone and credit cards can uncover the daily rhythms of city life, for all its residents.Riccardo Di Clemente, Newton International Fellow of Royal Society, UCLMarta Gonzalez, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning, University of California, BerkeleyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/959922018-06-11T10:42:46Z2018-06-11T10:42:46ZMexico City’s new airport is an environmental disaster but it could become a huge national park<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222511/original/file-20180610-191962-9kv9qn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mexico City's new Norman Foster-designed airport, seen here in a computer rendering, is visually striking but environmentally problematic.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/oLM5se">Presidencia de la República Mexicana CC-by-2.0</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><a href="http://theconversation.com/el-nuevo-aeropuerto-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico-es-un-desastre-ambiental-que-podria-ser-un-gran-parque-natural-98131">Leer en español</a>.</em></p>
<p>Mexico City long ago outgrew the two-terminal Benito Juárez International Airport, which is <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-07-03/new-rules-at-mexico-city-airport-aim-to-ease-flight-delays">notorious for delays, overcrowding and canceled flights</a>.</p>
<p>Construction is now underway on a striking <a href="http://www.aeropuerto.gob.mx/">new international airport</a> east of this metropolis of 20 million. When it opens in late 2020, the <a href="http://leed.usgbc.org/leed.html">LEED-certified</a> new airport – whose terminal building was designed by renowned British architect <a href="https://www.fosterandpartners.com/projects/new-international-airport-mexico-city/">Norman Foster</a> in collaboration with the well-known Mexican architect <a href="http://www.fr-ee.org/project/5/Mexico+New+International+Airport">Fernando Romero</a> – is expected to eventually serve 125 million passengers. That’s more than Chicago O'Hare and Los Angeles’ LAX. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=596&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/222515/original/file-20180610-191943-1q17ru7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=749&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mexico’s new airport sits in a federal reserve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yavidaxiu/The Conversation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But after three years of construction and <a href="http://www.aeropuerto.gob.mx/obras_preliminares_estudios.php">US$1.3 billion</a>, costs are ballooning and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-airport/mexico-presidential-front-runner-plans-steps-to-halt-corrupt-new-airport-idUSKBN1GY3E9">corruption allegations</a> have dogged both the funding and contracting process.</p>
<p>Environmentalists are also concerned. The new airport is located on a semi-dry lake bed that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/world/americas/mexico-city-airport-enrique-pena-nieto.html">provides water for Mexico City and prevents flooding</a>. It also hosts migrating flocks and is home to rare native species like the Mexican duck and Kentish plover. </p>
<p>According to the federal government’s environmental impact assessment, <a href="http://apps1.semarnat.gob.mx/dgiraDocs/documentos/mex/resumenes/2014/15EM2014V0044.pdf">12 threatened species and 1 endangered species</a> live in the area. </p>
<p>The airport project is now so divisive that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the populist front-runner in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-08/north-america-s-biggest-airport-project-hits-turbulence">the country’s 2018 presidential campaign</a>, has suggested scrapping it entirely. </p>
<h2>An environmental disaster</h2>
<p>I’m an expert in landscape architecture who studies the ecological adaption of urban environments. I think there’s a way to save Mexico’s new airport and make it better in the process: create a nature reserve around it. </p>
<p>Five hundred years ago, lakes covered roughly 20 percent of the Valle de Mexico, a 3,500-square-mile valley in the country’s south-central region. Slowly, over centuries, local residents – first the Aztecs, then the Spanish colonizers and then the Mexican government – built cities, irrigation systems and plumbing systems that <a href="http://www.letraslibres.com/mexico/el-lago-texcoco">sucked the region dry</a>.</p>
<p>By the mid-20th century, the lakes had been almost entirely drained. In 1971, President Luís Echeverría <a href="http://www.dof.gob.mx/nota_to_imagen_fs.php?codnota=4767504&fecha=21/07/1971&cod_diario=205319">decreed the area a federal reserve</a>, citing the region’s critical ecological role for Mexico City. The smattering of small lakes and reforested land there now catch and store runoff rainwater and prevent dust storms. </p>
<p>The new airport will occupy 17 square miles of the 46-square-mile former Lake Texcoco. To ensure effective water management for Mexico City, the airport master plan proposes creating new permanent water bodies to offset the lakes lost to the airport and cleaning up and restoring nine rivers east of the airport. It also proposes planting some 250,000 trees. </p>
<p>The government’s environmental assessment determined that the impacts of the new airport, while significant, are acceptable because Lake Texcoco is already “an altered ecosystem that lost the majority of its original environmental importance due to desiccation and urban expansion.” Today, the report continues, “it is now only a desolate and abandoned area.”</p>
<p>Environmentalists <a href="https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/the-bumpy-take-off-of-mexico-citys-new-airport/559259/">loudly disagree</a>.</p>
<h2>Make Mexico’s airport great again</h2>
<p>I see this environmental controversy as an opportunity to give Mexico City something way more transformative than a shiny new airport. </p>
<p>Nobody can entirely turn back the clock on Lake Texcoco. But the 27 square miles of lake bed not occupied by the airport could be regenerated, its original habitat partially revitalized and environmental functions recovered in a process known as <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-new-york-to-romania-restoration-ecology-is-helping-nature-heal-and-maybe-humanity-too-80018">restoration ecology</a>. </p>
<p>I envision a huge natural park consisting of sports fields, forests, green glades and a diverse array of water bodies – both permanent and seasonal – punctuated by bike paths, walking trails and access roads. </p>
<p>The airport will come equipped with new ground transportation to Mexico City, making the park easily accessible to residents. Extensions from the surrounding neighborhood streets and highways could connect people in poor neighborhoods abutting the airport – dense concrete jungles like Ecatepec, <a href="https://theconversation.com/while-mexico-plays-politics-with-its-water-some-cities-flood-and-others-go-dry-91709">Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl</a> and Chimalhuacan – to green space for the first time. </p>
<p>The nine rivers that empty into Lake Texcoco from the east could be turned into greenways to connect people from further out in Mexico State to what would become the area’s largest public park. </p>
<p>Space could also be reserved for cultural attractions such as museums, open and accessible to passengers in transit. </p>
<h2>New master plan</h2>
<p>This idea is not as crazy as it sounds. </p>
<p>As early as 1998, Mexican architects Alberto Kalach and the late Teodoro González de León proposed rehabilitating the lakes of the Valley of Mexico. Their book, “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/La_ciudad_y_sus_lagos.html?id=x6VoAAAAMAAJ">The City and its Lakes</a>,” even envisaged a revenue-generating island airport as part of this environmentally revitalized Lake Texcoco. </p>
<p>Under President Felipe Calderon, Mexico’s National Water Commission also proposed building an <a href="http://www.inakiecheverria.com/en/proyecto/parque-ecologico/">ecological park in Lake Texcoco</a>, which was to include an <a href="http://www.inakiecheverria.com/en/proyecto/museo-2/">island museum</a> and restore long-degraded nearby agricultural land. But <a href="http://www.conagua.gob.mx/conagua07/contenido/Documentos/LIBROS%20BLANCOS/CONAGUA-07%20Programa%20Parque%20Ecol%C3%B3gico%20Lago%20de%20Texcoco%20(PELT).pdf">the project</a> never gained traction. </p>
<p>Granted, turning a large, half-constructed airport into a national park would require an ambitious new master plan and a budget reallocation.</p>
<p>But in my opinion, evolution and change should be part of ambitious public designs. And this one is already expected to cost an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-13/in-mexico-city-mud-pena-nieto-s-13-billion-project-bogs-down">additional $7.7 billion to complete</a> anyway.</p>
<p>Toronto’s <a href="https://downsviewpark.ca/park">Downsview Park</a> – a 291-acre former air force base turned green space – has transformed so much since its conception in 1995 that its declared mission is now to “constantly develop, change and mature to reflect the surrounding community with each generation.”</p>
<p>Local communities neighboring Mexico City’s new airport were not <a href="http://www.sinembargo.mx/28-10-2014/1153741">adequately consulted</a> about their needs, environmental concerns and their current stakes in the Lake Texcoco area. A revamped park plan could be truly inclusive, designed to provide recreation and urban infrastructure – and maybe even permanent jobs – for these underserved populations. </p>
<h2>Presidential race</h2>
<p>Three of the four candidates in Mexico’s July 1 presidential election want to finish Mexico City’s new international airport. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-mexico-a-firebrand-leftist-provokes-the-powers-that-be-including-donald-trump-78918">López Obrador</a>, who for months has had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/06/06/world/americas/06reuters-mexico-election.html">an unbeatable lead</a> in the polls, is not so sure. </p>
<p>Early in his campaign, he said he would <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mexico-election-airport/cancelling-new-mexico-airport-would-cost-6-6-billion-company-ceo-idUSKBN1H22VQ">cancel it if elected</a>. Instead, López Obrador suggested, a former air force base could become the new international terminal. It would be connected to Benito Juárez airport, 22 miles south, by train. </p>
<p>López Obrador has since said he would support completing construction of the new international airport if the remaining financing came from the private sector, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/elecciones-2018/nuevo-aeropuerto-con-inversion-privada-no-publica-amlo">not the Mexican government</a>. Currently, some two-thirds of the project is funded by <a href="http://www.aeropuerto.gob.mx/preguntas_frecuentes_nuevo_aeropuerto.php">future airport taxes</a>. </p>
<p>López Obrador’s promise to review and likely upend the airport plan could open the door to its wholesale transformation, putting people and nature are at the core of a plan ostensibly designed for the public good.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gabriel Diaz Montemayor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Mexico City desperately needs a new airport. It also needs more green space. One landscape architect thinks the Mexican capital’s new Norman Foster-designed international airport can be both.Gabriel Diaz Montemayor, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/882012017-11-30T14:03:18Z2017-11-30T14:03:18ZDisaster zones could soon be salvaged by teams of smart devices – here’s how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196987/original/file-20171129-12048-1387n3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Drones being used to find survivors after an earthquake in Ecuador in 2016. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portoviejo-ecuador-april-18-2016-drone-409095937?src=NUtpZVKd5yu0p5Vd2Rq6Zw-1-82">Fotos593</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We will remember 2017 as an appalling year for natural disasters. The US <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/the-most-expensive-u-s-hurricane-season-ever-by-the-numbers">has endured</a> its most expensive hurricane season, amounting to over $200 billion (£151 billion) of damage. Mexico City <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/19/americas/mexico-earthquake/index.html">experienced</a> a terrible earthquake that killed over 200 people, while severe tropical storms forced tens of thousands of evacuations in <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/24/typhoon-hato-leaves-16-dead-27000-evacuated-china/">Macau, Hong Kong</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/deadly-typhoon-lan-hits-toyko-171023092944487.html">Tokyo</a>. </p>
<p>It comes months after the UN’s head of disaster planning <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/24/world-heading-for-catastrophe-over-natural-disasters-risk-expert-warns">warned that</a> the world is not adequately preparing for disasters. This, he said, risks “inconceivably bad” consequences as climate change makes disasters more frequent and severe. </p>
<p>In such circumstances, modern technologies like smartphones, sensors and drones could help enormously, particularly if we can get them to act like an intelligent network. But first, we software engineers have to figure out how to make this viable. The good news is there are signs of progress – with a little help from some completely different areas of expertise. </p>
<h2>Temporary measures</h2>
<p>When an area is hit by a hurricane, earthquake or volcanic eruption, a functioning communications system is vital. Good communications can be the difference between life and death when it comes to coordinating rescue efforts; relaying public information about things like shelters and supplies; and enabling inhabitants to communicate with family and friends. </p>
<p>Disasters go hand in hand with communications outages, of course. The next best thing is ad hoc networks of multiple devices that gather and relay information. This <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/24/us/robot-disaster-technology/index.html">could soon</a> regularly include sensors dropped from planes to sample the environment; swarms of drones looking for victims; and clean-up robots. The potential is for all these to work together, alongside people sending information on smartphones. </p>
<p>And it might go further still: devices still need power, and the main electricity sources are likely to be offline, too. The grid will probably be pulling in <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-artificial-intelligence-could-be-key-to-future-proofing-the-grid-71775">temporary power</a> from small devices ranging from small generators to solar panels – all ideally coordinated in real time. </p>
<p>Making this ecosystem work in unison requires several levels of organisation. At one level, each class of devices needs to interact. The bandwidth of the temporary communications network will probably be very limited, for example, creating the complex problem of deciding which transmissions to prioritise and how to route them efficiently through the network. </p>
<p>The broader network also has to organise, responding to new events as appropriate. A relatively simple current example is <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7306577/">this online flooding platform</a> in Jakarta. It pools information for inhabitants based on feeds from a network of street sensors and people on smartphones. </p>
<p>To build a more complex system and make it run smoothly, it becomes harder and harder to rigidly pre-engineer software: no centralised control is possible, especially in a wide disaster area where communications between devices are too slow or multi-layered. </p>
<h2>Great inspirations</h2>
<p>Software engineers have yet to develop such a system – despite <a href="http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S157411921400162X">significant advances</a> in algorithms. Our best pre-programmed efforts tend to quickly unravel, coming up against unforeseen variables. Improving these systems is challenging to say the least. </p>
<p>Neither is it just an issue for disaster areas. The world is increasingly instrumented with interconnected devices, each running with some form of algorithmic intelligence. They are <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-17837-0_9">managing</a> city traffic light systems, for example. They are <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-artificial-intelligence-could-be-key-to-future-proofing-the-grid-71775">managing electricity</a> supply and demand across the grid. </p>
<p>Some programmers have looked beyond computer science to improve such systems. One inspiration is the American political economist Elinor Ostrom. Her <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2009/ostrom-lecture.html">Nobel Prize winning work</a> identified how communities in places as diverse as Kenya, Guatemala, Turkey, Nepal and Los Angeles self-govern and share resources while leaving enough for future generations. </p>
<p>Ostrom discerned eight common characteristics, and derived principles that could be applied anywhere. One was that you must ensure those affected by the rules can participate in modifying them, for example. Another was the need for a system for monitoring community members’ behaviour carried out by the members themselves. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=422&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196991/original/file-20171129-12069-1zlpnf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=530&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elinor Ostrom.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nobel_Prize_2009-Press_Conference_KVA-31.jpg#/media/File:Nobel_Prize_2009-Press_Conference_KVA-31.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The German-American philosopher Nicholas Rescher is also helping programmers. Rescher <a href="http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/fairness-theory-and-practice-of-distributive-justice/">argued</a> that when deciding how to distribute rewards/punishments fairly, seven “canons” should be taken into account: equality, need, ability, effort, productivity, social utility and supply and demand. The idea is to identify which canon is most appropriate in a given situation. Programmers are using these principles to help networks make judgements about allocating scarce resources, for example, and resolving conflicts between different devices. </p>
<p>Jeremy’s recent co-authored work <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2382570.2382575">has shown</a> how Ostrom and Rescher’s ideas <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=2676689.2629567">could be</a> expressed as algorithms for managing device networks. The benefits have been demonstrated in a relatively static environment where the population and number of devices is generally stable or predictable – distributing energy and protecting against overloads within a local community, say. But in a disaster scenario where the number, location and availability of devices is continually changing and almost completely unpredictable, the model needs extending.</p>
<p>To solve this, the final piece of the jigsaw comes from biology, where different animals adapt to changes in their environment. Individual creatures learn over their lifetimes, while a species adapts over many generations <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/survival-of-the-fittest">through evolution</a> – more successful traits becoming dominant while less successful ones are bred out. </p>
<p>Emma was involved, for example, in <a href="https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2897372">creating a system</a> for robotic swarms that handle change far better than alternative approaches. It enables the robots both to “learn” from experience and adapt the parameters of their algorithm, and “evolve” completely new behaviours where the environment has changed so much that existing algorithms won’t suffice. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.napier.ac.uk/research-and-innovation/research-search/outputs/for-flux-sake-the-confluence-of-socially-and-biologically-inspired-computing-for">recently outlined</a> how these three strands from political theory, social science and biology could be brought together to develop a new paradigm for complex device networks. We see <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=56&v=YGL5YxO10zs">encouraging signs</a> that such thinking is starting to catch on among researchers. </p>
<p>These ideas should enable us to develop new approaches that will underpin and enhance a wide variety of human activities – not least when the next disaster strikes. It might even mitigate the effects of climate change, making us better at foreseeing catastrophes and taking steps to avert them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Hart receives funding from the EPSRC and the Leverhulme Trust. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeremy Pitt has most recently received funding from Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship RF-2016-451, but has also been awarded Resaerch Grants from the EU and UK ESPRC.</span></em></p>Stand by for drones, robots and sensors to the rescue.Emma Hart, Chair in Natural Computation, Edinburgh Napier UniversityJeremy Pitt, Professor of Intelligent and Self-Organising Systems, Imperial College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/852932017-10-19T14:31:56Z2017-10-19T14:31:56ZMexico City has 79 governments responding to two massive earthquakes – the results are patchy, at best<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191019/original/file-20171019-1045-1lepx8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com"> Axel Alvarado/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Governing Greater Mexico City – the largest and most populated city in North America – is a great challenge. Its <a href="http://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/mexico-city-population/">22m inhabitants</a> are spread out unevenly over an area roughly ten times larger than New York City. It is governed by one federal, two state and 76 municipal governments, each with overlapping responsibilities.</p>
<p>Greater Mexico City’s leaders and people have become more aware of the weaknesses and obstacles that can arise from having so many governments. The city’s <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/issj.12070/full">socio-economic problems</a> – including high levels of inequality, and widespread poverty – are difficult to deal with, because responsibilities and resources are split between the region’s governments, and there is little coordination or oversight.</p>
<p>This is clearest in times of crisis. Recently, Mexican authorities have had to deal with the fallout from the two massive earthquakes, both of which shook Mexico City in the space of a fortnight during September 2017. The first, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41209243">on September 8</a>, was the strongest registered to have hit the city in the last 100 years. The second, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/19/mexico-city-earthquake-anniversary-1985">on September 20</a>, was the nation’s most lethal earthquake since 1985, causing <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/36b9fb40-9edd-11e7-8cd4-932067fbf946?mhq5j=e7">more than 270 deaths</a>. According to official estimates, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/es/interactive/ciudad-de-mexico-destruccion-danos-estructuras-sismo-roma-condesa/">over 3,400 buildings</a> in the city were damaged, and dozens collapsed.</p>
<p>The government response to this devastation was uneven, at best.</p>
<h2>Snap decisions</h2>
<p>Most of the damage and casualties occurred in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/19/world/americas/mexico-earthquake-map-photos.html">central and western parts</a> of the city, where the main commercial and financial hotspots are located. These areas usually benefit from better public services than the rest of the city. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=348&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191020/original/file-20171019-1048-5sihz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The leafy centre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/16480547967/sizes/l">Lars Plougmann/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, those living on the city’s outer edges typically endure poor public transport links, decreased public safety, less prosperous businesses and a lack of economic development opportunities. These differences have created <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/drone-photography-mexico-city-2016-11?IR=T">visible divisions</a> between high- and low-income areas. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/qanda-how-cities-can-recover-from-natural-disasters-84409">Q&A: how cities can recover from natural disasters</a>
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<p>After the second earthquake struck, these divides became even more striking. The federal government declared 16 municipalities in central Mexico City to be a disaster zone. This allowed local authorities to access human, financial and logistical resources, to undertake emergency measures to protect and preserve human lives and infrastructure, with help from <a href="http://www.vertigopolitico.com/articulo/22878/Qu-es-el-Fonden-y-cmo-funciona">the federal Natural Disaster Fund Trust</a> (FONDEN). </p>
<p>The decision was based on <a href="http://www.reporteindigo.com/reporte/gobierno-sin-estrategia-comunicacion-tras-sismo-advierte-articulo-19/">subjective estimates by the federal, State of Mexico, and Mexico City authorities</a>, based on the number of casualties and the amount of damage sustained in each of the two states which make up Greater Mexico City. It did not take into account the immediate and long-term needs of the communities throughout the city as a whole. As a result, municipalities on the outskirts of the city lost out on federal assistance.</p>
<h2>Back to normality?</h2>
<p>For instance, the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl – a densly-populated, low-income commuter town – <a href="https://www.sdpnoticias.com/local/edomex/2017/09/20/piden-declarar-a-neza-zona-de-desastre-por-sismo">requested that state and federal authorities</a> declare it a disaster zone, so that it could access FONDEN funds. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BaFWsMfDM5b","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>At face value, its request seems unwarranted. There were no casualties, and only four people were injured in the entire municipality. Yet the earthquakes took a heavy toll on local infrastructure. Nearly <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/metropoli/edomex/sismos-afectan-servicio-de-agua-potable-en-neza">3,200 households</a> were affected by the earthquake, about 2,700 of them sustained heavy damage, and some will need to be demolished.</p>
<p>The underground water network also sustained damage, which has prevented locals from getting safe, potable water delivered to their homes. The underfunded local authority – which struggles to provide adequate public services even in times of normality – could take a very long time to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. </p>
<p>The federal government’s insistence on using state boundaries to determine which areas need emergency funds after natural disasters prevents a swift return to normal life. Disaster-struck municipalities right across Greater Mexico City initially lost out on federal help. It was only when the State of Mexico government <a href="http://www.elnorte.com/aplicacioneslibre/articulo/default.aspx?id=1216682&md5=399a32387ad946c696b5b74a9c9f4eb5&ta=0dfdbac11765226904c16cb9ad1b2efe">publicly called on the federal government</a> to act, that other affected areas bordering central Mexico City received FONDEN resources to tackle the aftermath of the earthquakes.</p>
<h2>Beyond boundaries</h2>
<p>Clearly, it’s time to look past administrative boundaries, to develop fairer and more efficient policies which improve the city’s response to earthquakes, and promote the long-term well-being and safety of its inhabitants. </p>
<p>Instead of relying on a boundary-based model – where decisions to invest in public infrastructure are <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FJu03Mw6xJwLn0ZmpVr3NURkqkUnGfu0hSqtyqc9u3A/edit#heading=h.1fob9te">made with a view to</a> securing returns through increased tax revenue or economic growth – the governments of Greater Mexico City will need to develop a better strategy. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-not-a-drill-how-1985-disaster-taught-mexico-to-prepare-for-earthquakes-84499">This is not a drill: how 1985 disaster taught Mexico to prepare for earthquakes</a>
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<p>This will require more cooperation, collaboration and - most importantly - sharing of information at all levels, to connect the city’s multiple authorities with its residents and businesses. Government preparedness for, and responses to, natural disasters should not stop at municipal borders.</p>
<p>A good first step would be to approve the Civil Protection General Law for the State of Mexico, which was presented back in 2012 but has not yet been amended or passed into law. This would bring in immediate changes to enhance the readiness and safety of Greater Mexico City. </p>
<p>It would force the State of Mexico governments to install public alert systems, so that all the inhabitants of Greater Mexico City – not just those in the centre – can hear the early warning signals. Currently, such devices are installed in federal buildings throughout the State of Mexico, but not in busy public areas as in central Mexico City.</p>
<p>A step as simple as installing loudspeakers connected to the national early warning systems in public areas across the whole of Greater Mexico City – not just the centre – would be an important step towards ensuring the safety of all residents when the next big earthquake strikes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85293/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Iván Farías Pelcastre has previously received funding from the Mexican National Council on Science and Technology and the Mexican Secretariat for Public Education.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmanuel Gómez Farías Mata has received funding from the Mexican National Council on Science and Technology, the Mexican Secretariat for Public Education and the Foundation José Ortega y Gasset, Spain.</span></em></p>Many of Greater Mexico City’s 22m residents aren’t receiving the help they need.Iván Farías Pelcastre, Vacation Visiting Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of OxfordEmmanuel Gómez Farías Mata, PhD in Government and Public Administration, Freie Universität BerlinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/844092017-09-21T17:36:10Z2017-09-21T17:36:10ZQ&A: how cities can recover from natural disasters<p><em>In the space of a month, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/20/mexico-earthquake-volunteers-survivors-rescue">hundreds of lives</a> have been lost due to natural disasters. Mexico was hit by <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/20/americas/mexico-two-earthquakes-in-one-month/index.html">two high-magnitude earthquakes</a> within two weeks, while swathes of the US and the Caribbean have been severely damaged or destroyed by the force of three successive hurricanes: <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-climate-change-for-the-hurricane-harvey-disaster-blame-society-83163">Harvey</a>, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-41172545">Irma</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/09/20/hurricane-maria-takes-aim-at-puerto-rico-with-force-not-seen-in-modern-history/?utm_term=.cb91cd33129c">Maria</a>. The Conversation spoke to Alfredo Stein Heinemann – a lecturer in urban development planning with more than 30 years of experience studying post-disaster reconstruction – to see how communities can mitigate and recover from the devastation wrought by natural disasters.</em> </p>
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<h2>Who are the people at greatest risk from natural disasters?</h2>
<p>In my experience from different places around the world, the people who suffer most when disasters happen are the urban poor. Usually, in these communities, the materials that people use to build their houses are substandard. Also, because land is so expensive in the city, the poor end up living in areas that are more vulnerable to the impacts of earthquakes or hurricanes. </p>
<p>What is interesting about the recent earthquake in Mexico, is that the affected areas that we have seen through the images transmitted worldwide seem relatively well off, and many of the buildings that have collapsed were located in middle-class neighbourhoods. Compared to the earthquake which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/18/mexico-city-earthquake-30-years-lessons">hit Mexico City in 1985</a> and killed 5,000 people, there were far fewer casualties this time around, and there’s no doubt that building codes, norms and practices have improved in the city over the last few decades. </p>
<p>But still, I think there are ongoing issues regarding corruption and malpractice when it comes to construction regulations and supervision – not only in Mexico, but across the world – where building companies sometimes use less robust materials in order to reduce costs. It’s a bit like what <a href="https://theconversation.com/grenfell-tower-fire-tragedy-reveals-ugly-flaws-of-regeneration-agenda-79452">the controversy</a> we saw during the recent fire at Grenfell Tower in London. </p>
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<h2>How long will it be until authorities can ensure that buildings are safe?</h2>
<p>Inspecting buildings to assess whether they have structural damage can actually be quite a rapid process. If there are good civil engineers who have experience in post-disaster reconstruction, they can make the appraisals within days. My concern with this kind of disaster is related to the processes that come afterwards, when the limelight fades away and no one is paying attention anymore. </p>
<p>In neighbourhoods that were already well established, there is going to be land speculation. In existing neighbourhoods where low-income families were living side by side with middle- and even upper-class households, there will be a push from private developers to buy up the buildings that were damaged or collapsed, so that they can rebuild costly apartments there instead. So you end up with new buildings that only higher income households can afford.</p>
<p>For example, after the flooding and landslides caused by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Hurricane-Mitch">Hurricane Mitch in Honduras</a> in 1998, some slums and informal settlements - especially those located near river banks – were declared uninhabitable. The scarcity of affordable land in cities was one factor which led to the relocation of low income households far from where they originally lived, and allowed higher income groups and developers <a href="http://www.globalurban.org/GUDMag07Vol3Iss1/Pearce-Oroz.htm">to capture</a> many of these vacant plots of land. </p>
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<span class="caption">Going upmarket: Tegucigalpa, Honduras.</span>
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<p>A similar thing happened in Chile, in the city of Talca, where <a href="http://www.academia.edu/13030282/Gentrification_in_the_context_of_post-_earthquake_reconstruction_urban_policies_A_review_of_the_Chilean_experience">preliminary research</a> has shown that neighbourhoods which were quite mixed in the past have started to become gentrified in the reconstruction process that began after the 2010 earthquake. The problem is that national and local governments sometimes rush to declare certain areas unsafe, not knowing that this opens the way for property speculation, and eventually market evictions. </p>
<p>That’s one of the reasons, if you ask me, that people should not necessarily be permanently relocated or displaced from the places they were living; because that place is their home, it’s near where they work and it’s where their whole social network is located. </p>
<h2>So what can be done to help communities stick together and stay in the place they call home, in the wake of a natural disaster?</h2>
<p>The most important thing is not to treat people like victims. They have been hit by an earthquake or a hurricane, and they are are in a state of shock, and they will probably need a lot of assistance. But they are the ones who have been affected, and as such, they should be key part of the decisions and reconstruction and rebuilding processes. </p>
<p>External forces, such as governments and aid agencies, as well as architects and engineers, need to help communities to be a part of that process, rather than making decisions on their behalf. Communities need to be active and involved, not just passively waiting for things to happen. The images of solidarity of people working together and helping their neighbours in both Mexico and the Caribbean are therefore encouraging. </p>
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<p>Governments and NGOs helping with reconstruction also need to be aware of the social networks and economic activities that local people had before, and try to rebuild those, too. </p>
<p>My main message is: do not relocate people. One of the main reasons that the recovery effort has been so slow in Haiti is that people were moved kilometres away from where they used to live – many are still in temporary shelters almost eight years after the 2011 earthquake. </p>
<h2>Experts are predicting that extreme weather events are going to become <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/8/28/16213268/harvey-climate-change">even more severe</a> – do you think that people living in vulnerable places might one day be forced to abandon their homes?</h2>
<p>I answer this with another question: would you ever think of evacuating London because there is a possibility of flooding? And the answer would be no, because we would find the technological and financial resources to invest in making the city more resilient. </p>
<p>Severe and extreme weather events are part of our daily life from now onward, and we have to learn to live with them. Life will continue in the Caribbean, life will continue in Mexico City, and I think that – rather than considering moving people out of these places – we need to be considering what we can do to minimise the impacts of climate change or future earthquakes. </p>
<p>Of course, when you have two hurricanes of this scale hitting you in a row, it’s like having two massive heart attacks one after the other. But there are ways of building with appropriate technology, which can reduce the possibility of buildings being totally destroyed, while making disaster recovery more straightforward. </p>
<p>Instead of people going and living in vulnerable and at risk areas, enact policies that enable people to access safer land with services where to live at an affordable price near the places where they work. Introduce small credit schemes, which enable people to build their own homes to high standards, with technical assistance, while still having the capacity to repay the loans. Invest in infrastructure to stabilise plots and make land liveable. These are the types of measures that we should be thinking of, especially in cities which are very prone to those types of disasters. </p>
<p>Another problem with big disaster stories like those we have experienced in the past month – especially as they relate to the impacts of severe and extreme weather – is that low-income households living in vulnerable areas in cities across the world are suffering more from short and intense torrential rainfall that can cause small landslides or flooding of 10 or 15 houses in a slum in one hour, and intense heat waves that affect elderly and infants and dry out the sources of water nearby. The daily impacts of these weather events is eroding the assets of the urban poor. And because these are not disaster stories, we don’t hear about them. </p>
<h2>How can the governments of poorer countries afford to invest in measures like these, to make it easier to deal with disasters when they occur?</h2>
<p>Poor people have resources. I’m not just talking about the house that they have already built by their own means; people also have social networks, education, health – they have their own income-generating activities. So you can always rely on those resources that people already possess, to help with disaster recovery and to take adaption measures that help to reduce or mitigate the risk of future weather events. </p>
<p>It’s amazing to see, when you visit the slums, how <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956247813519046">people are already taking measures</a>; for example, inside their homes they raise their beds and electrical equipment off the floor when they know that the floods are coming. The problem is that academics, aid agencies or governments are not able to see what people are already doing. </p>
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<p>Consider that <a href="http://csud.ei.columbia.edu/files/2012/04/Slumdwellers-complete.pdf">about ten years ago</a>, the majority of houses in the developing world were not built by the governments or private companies, they were built by the efforts of the people. It’s possible to leverage local resources and support people to take preventive measures through partnerships with the public and private sectors – whether that’s philanthropic agencies like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or private companies and banks. The role of governments is to enable the formation of these partnerships. </p>
<p>By providing better technical assistance, and allocating a small amount of resources to improve the quality of housing, you can effectively mobilise local resources to help solve the problem. Co-financing and micro-lending schemes such as <a href="http://www.microfinancegateway.org/sites/default/files/mfg-en-case-study-participation-and-sustainability-in-social-projects-the-experience-of-the-local-development-program-prodel-in-nicaragua-jun-2000.pdf">PRODEL</a> in Nicaragua give people the power to make adaptations and take preventive measures, using their own resources together with finance from local government, the private sector or international aid agencies. These types of programs exist in different parts of the world, and more and more you see organised communities having this capacity to negotiate with local governments. </p>
<p>Instead of waiting for services to be delivered, people are saying to their local governments “we will invest our work, our labour, our resources, if you will allow and help us in providing services in these communities”. So when there are these dramatic events, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the main resources needed for recovery are already there, and that’s people themselves, with their own capacities, professions and social networks. That is where reconstruction begins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84409/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>As member of the Global Urban Research Group, University of Manchester Alfredo Stein Heinemann received a research grant from the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) through the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) for a project on Climate Change Adaptation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He was pro-bono advisor to Comic Relief's Urban Upgrading Programme.As a member of the Global Urban Research Group (GURG), University of Manchester, Alfredo Stein Heinemann received a applied research grant from the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) through the Inter American Development Bank (IADB) for a project on Asset Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He was also part of a team of GURG that implemented research projects on pro-poor climate change adaptation in cities of the global South funded by the Social Division of the World Bank and the Ford Foundation. He worked for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) in post-emergency reconstruction projects in Central America, and has also been a pro-bono advisor the Comic Relief’s urban slum upgrading programme.</span></em></p>An expert in post-disaster reconstruction explains what works, and what doesn’t, when it comes to rebuilding a city.Alfredo Stein Heinemann, Lecturer in Urban Development Planning, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/771412017-05-12T02:00:57Z2017-05-12T02:00:57ZBefore Trump, Mexicans really liked the US<p>Donald Trump’s antagonistic rhetoric toward Mexico has caused an increase in anti-American sentiment among Mexicans.</p>
<p>Today, many in Mexico reject Trump’s policies and fear his administration, citing it as fascist, <a href="http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/entrada-de-opinion/articulo/jorge-camil/nacion/2015/11/20/la-gestapo-de-trump">authoritarian</a>, populist, dictatorial, xenophobic, misogynist or simply <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/opinion/jose-cardenas/2015/06/19/1030279">an aberration</a>.</p>
<p>It wasn’t always this way. Since the mid-1980s, Mexican politicians, intellectuals, journalists and business professionals promoted a positive view of the U.S. Pro-American sentiment was handed down through generations.</p>
<p>As a scholar of how other countries view the United States, I believe Mexican anti-Americanism is bad news for bilateral relations. Considering the U.S. exported more then US$19 billion to Mexico just <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c2010.html">in January 2017</a> and 1 million people <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/07/19/opinion-million-people-cross-border-legally-every-day-and-that-good-thing.html">legally cross the border</a> every day, this political and social turbulence should be concerning. A return to the pre-Trump Mexican sentiment regarding the U.S. could take many years, if not decades.</p>
<h2>Relations and trust in decline</h2>
<p>In January 2015, the Mexican polling company Parametria <a href="http://www.parametria.com.mx/carta_parametrica.php?cp=4933">published a survey</a> showing that 49 percent of Mexicans considered U.S.-Mexican relations to be either good or very good. Two years later, only 21 percent considered relations to be good or very good. And, 49 percent of Mexicans said U.S.-Mexican relations were either bad or very bad.</p>
<p>A poll by the Mexican newspaper Reforma conducted <a href="https://gruporeforma-blogs.com/encuestas/?s=trump">in August 2016</a> revealed that 86 percent of Mexicans had an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. Only 5 percent maintained a favorable one. In the same poll, 95 percent of the Mexicans rejected Trump’s position on immigration and the proposal of building a wall along the Mexican border.</p>
<p>Likewise, 85 percent of Mexicans agreed that if Trump implements the changes he has been advocating, Mexico will be at least somewhat affected. About 73 percent showed significant concern for the future of Mexico. And, 62 percent of the population agreed with the statement that Mexico should strongly defend its own interests, even if that leads to a confrontation with Trump.</p>
<h2>Mexico’s once-stable view</h2>
<p>A positive view of the United States among the Mexican people has, in recent history, actually been quite stable. Starting in 2004 the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics in Mexico conducted <a href="http://libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-156.pdf">a series</a> of <a href="http://www.libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-257.pdf">surveys</a> every two years, with help from the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs in 2004 and 2006. They asked Mexicans to rate how favorably they viewed the U.S. and 24 other countries on a scale from 0 to 100. Countries were then ranked most to least favorable by their scores. Results from 2016 will be released in June.</p>
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<p>For 10 years – from <a href="http://www.libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-257.pdf">2004</a> to 2014 – the United States, with the exception of 2008, remained the first or second most favorable country for Mexicans. The only year the U.S. fell <a href="http://libreriacide.com/librospdf/DTEI-188.pdf">below second place</a> was 2008, but even then it scored 62 out of 100. The lower ranking was likely related to low approval ratings of the American invasion to Iraq and Afghanistan, in Mexico and around the world.</p>
<p>Several forces contributed to a pro-American perspective. Officially, the government promoted a pro-American agenda in order to highlight the benefits of an economic alliances with the U.S. </p>
<p>Unofficially, the presence of <a href="http://www.jstor.org.zeus.tarleton.edu:82/stable/pdf/2567048.pdf">American culture</a> in music, TV and cinema is also contributed. The constant movement of Mexican immigrants to and from the United States brought not only American goods to Mexico, but also American traditions, practices and ideals.</p>
<p>Affinity toward the U.S. <a href="https://www.frbatlanta.org/-/media/documents/filelegacydocs/Jwhi811.pdf">also grew</a> with the success of the American economy during the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, Mexico was <a href="https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/the-mexican-1982-debt-crisis/">experiencing economic crisis</a> and devaluation of the peso. In 1992, Mexico formalized the integration of their economy with the United States by signing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).</p>
<h2>Beyond reaction?</h2>
<p>The change in numbers solidify the deteriorating relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. Mexicans have protested in front of the American Embassy in Mexico City. Walks have been <a href="http://www.animalpolitico.com/2017/01/mexico-embajada-protesta-trump/">organized</a> to <a href="http://www.excelsior.com.mx/nacional/2017/02/13/1145977">disavow Trump</a> and his policies. Many in the <a href="http://www.milenio.com/firmas/hector_aguilar_camin_dia-con-dia/donald_trump-100_dias-politica_interna-comercio_internacional-frontera-muro_18_849095110.html">intellectual community</a> have <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/01/04/mexico-stood-up-to-reagan-it-can-stand-up-to-trump-too/?utm_term=.27be643ccf48">condemned Trump’s views</a>. </p>
<p>Enrique Krauze, a Mexican intellectual, has <a href="http://aristeguinoticias.com/0203/entrevistas/donald-trump-es-un-perfecto-fascista-enrique-krauze-en-cnn/">repeatedly called Trump</a> “a perfect fascist” and has <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2017/02/03/opinion/1486142760_089776.html">declared Mexico</a> to be at war, though not militarily, with the United States. </p>
<p>For Mexicans, being immune to the offensive statements of Trump is difficult. Unfortunately, their reactive resentment may obscure a thoughtful critique of the United States, its policies, constituents and the structural reasons for Trump’s ascent to the White House. </p>
<p><em>Author’s note: Research assistant Bailey Ross contributed to the writing of this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jesus Velasco is Joe and Teresa Endowed Chair is Social Science at Tarleton State University and Non-Resident scholar of the Mexican Center at Rice University.</span></em></p>Can the U.S. recover its once positive image among Mexicans? Trade, immigration and cultural ties stand to suffer.Jesus Velasco, Joe and Teresa Endowed Chair in Social Sciences, Tarleton State University, Tarleton State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/689592016-11-28T01:25:59Z2016-11-28T01:25:59ZMexicans are migrating, just not across the US border<p>Mexican migration to the U.S. is <a href="https://theconversation.com/more-mexicans-are-leaving-the-us-than-coming-across-the-border-51296">in decline</a>. The <a href="http://www.pewhispanic.org/2015/11/19/more-mexicans-leaving-than-coming-to-the-u-s/">Pew Hispanic Research Center</a> has found that since 2009, more than one million native-born Mexicans living in the U.S. returned to Mexico. But many other Mexicans never crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in the first place.</p>
<p>Why are some Mexican migrants choosing to stay home? What does it mean for the U.S. border with Mexico? </p>
<p>The decline in migration to the U.S. is not simply linked to building more <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-crumbling-wall-plan-1460320010">barriers at the border</a>. Changing demography, economy, the difficulties of living in the U.S. and a growing sense of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-mexican-immigration-20151118-story.html">opportunity at home</a>, among many other factors, are <a href="http://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1246&context=carsey">shifting Mexican migration to the U.S.</a></p>
<p>Every year millions of Mexicans travel from their hometowns to other parts of the country for work, education and personal freedoms that domestic life and traditional expectations often limit. Migrants who decide to travel to Mexican cities, tourist sites like Cancun, factories and farms may not earn the wages that lie just across the border. Yet, they also avoid the difficulties that often come with adapting to the U.S.</p>
<p>Internal migration is not new, and moving within Mexico <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2011/08/drug-war-refugees-violence-asylum-mexico.html">has a rich history</a>. It is something that rural folks have done for generations, while migration to the U.S. grew only in the 1980s and 1990s.</p>
<p>Based on <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00207659.2016.1197721">our research</a> published in the International Journal of Sociology, we argue that internal migration is an important and viable alternative for people who are in search of security and opportunity and will not or cannot cross the U.S. border.</p>
<h2>Oaxacan migrants in Mexico</h2>
<p>We spent time with families in rural villages in the southern Mexican state of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaxaca">Oaxaca</a>, and learned that internal migration has a long history in the region. Through the mid-20th century, Oaxacans found opportunities as itinerant vendors traveling throughout the region and working on coastal plantations during the harvest season. </p>
<p>Don Betto, who lives in the Sierra Madre del Sur, told us about his trips to southern Mexico in the 1950s and 1960s. (Our study was designed to ensure our subjects remained anonymous, so Don Betto is not his real name. All subjects’ names have been changed.) Following the planting season, he carried cookware on his back, selling door-to-door to earn the cash that his family could count on during the year.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/146844/original/image-20161121-4528-7uex0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Oaxacan vendor selling wares.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jeffrey Cohen</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the later half of the 20th century, many Oaxacans ventured a bit farther from home and settled in Mexico City. They found jobs, opportunities for education and, for at least a few men, brides. Through the 1990s and into the 21st century, Oaxacans <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/cohcul">continued to migrate</a>. And while many Oaxacans sought opportunities in the U.S., a minority stayed in Mexico and settled in tourists cities like Cancun, or the agricultural fields of Baja California.</p>
<p>The incomes earned by migrants who stay in Mexico do not compete with the wages paid in the U.S. Nevertheless, many Mexicans are quite clear as to why they prefer to stay close to home. Don Alejandro, a young Oaxacan from the state’s central valleys region, described why he traveled to find work in the resort town of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California rather than crossing into the U.S.:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Up north you work then pay bills, then work more to pay more bills… it’s okay here; it’s not much but it’s mine.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Don Maurico, an older wood carver from the village of San Miguel, was even clearer, balancing his critique with a bit of sarcasm: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“Look, if I go over there [the U.S.] I’ll make a lot of money, but it is so expensive. If I stay here, well that’s okay. Why would I want to go and have to pay hundreds of dollars for a toaster? I’m happy earning a little right here.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Migrating without leaving home</h2>
<p>The Oaxacans we worked with during our research are a few of the many Mexicans who migrate within national boundaries. The National Institute for Statistics, Geography and Information <a href="http://www.inegi.org.mx/default.aspx">estimates</a> these migrants are 4 to 5 percent of the nation’s total population of about 130 million people. In other words, about six million Mexicans are moving within the nation’s borders. And while some of these migrants might elect to cross into the U.S. in the future, it’s unlikely given the legal challenges of border crossing, as well as what <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/a-lonely-life-for-immigrants-in-americas-rust-belt/394082/">Alana Semuels</a> of The Atlantic describes as a lonely life for immigrants. Mexicans travel within the boundaries of their nation to find opportunity and to keep the stresses of crossing into the U.S. at arm’s length. </p>
<p>In Mexico, they are not questioned over the status of their citizenship. They share a common language, culture and history. Staying within Mexico does not lead to riches, but as Don Valeriano described his situation, “he can be a leader at home” and participate fully in the civil life of his village.</p>
<p>Migrants balance risk and opportunity as they decide to move. Fostering the continued growth of those possibilities within Mexico, and the continued strengthening of the Mexican economy can help build a future without building a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/07/business/economy/the-crumbling-case-for-a-mexican-border-wall.html?_r=0">wall</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68959/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey H. Cohen received fieldwork and research funding from The National Science Foundation for some of the data reported on here.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bernardo Ramirez Rios does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>US elections surfaced fears of Mexicans crossing into the US. But their numbers are actually in decline. Why are they choosing to stay in Mexico? Two migration experts went there to find out.Jeffrey H. Cohen, Professor of Anthropology, The Ohio State UniversityBernardo Ramirez Rios, Professor of Anthropology, Skidmore CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647792016-09-06T13:06:43Z2016-09-06T13:06:43ZHow we discovered a possible link between car exhausts and Alzheimer’s<p>Iron is known to be toxic to brain cells, and tiny magnetic iron particles (magnetite) are thought to be involved in the development of neurological disorders. Now, for the first time, we have <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/08/31/1605941113">identified</a> the abundant presence of these highly reactive particles in human brains. </p>
<p>Previous studies <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24873">have suggested</a> that there are increased amounts of magnetite in Alzheimer’s-affected brains, and that these particles may be linked with the development of the disease. We wondered if this increased brain magnetite might come from inhaling polluted air.</p>
<p>Very small, round particles made out of magnetite (called magnetite nanospheres) are abundant in city air pollution. They are formed at high temperatures and condense as iron-rich droplets as they cool. These particles range in diameter from less than 5nm (nanometres) to more than 100nm (for comparison an HIV is 120nm in diameter) and are often found together with pollution particles made out of other metals.</p>
<p>Vehicles are a major source of these magnetite nanospheres. They are created by fuel combustion (especially diesel), iron wear from the engine block and frictional heating from brake pads. In addition to some occupational settings, high concentrations of magnetite pollution nanoparticles may be produced indoors by open fires or poorly-sealed stoves used for cooking or heating. </p>
<p>Larger magnetite particles can be more than 10 micrometres in diameter (about the size of a cloud water droplet) and come from industrial sources, such as power stations, but only magnetite pollution particles that are smaller than 200nm can enter the brain directly by being breathed in through the nose. They can then travel through the nerve cells of the olfactory bulb (see illustration). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=665&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136613/original/image-20160905-4758-16n795c.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=836&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">By-passing the blood-brain barrier.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37206430">Patrick J. Lynch</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The blood-brain barrier – the protective cell wall that prevents harmful substances entering the brain – doesn’t protect against this type of nasal entry, so these small particles can enter the brain relatively unimpeded. After nanoparticles enter these olfactory areas, they can spread to other parts of the brain, including the hippocampus and cerebral cortex, which are regions affected in Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>The presence in the brain of magnetite might trigger events leading to neurodegenerative disease. Magnetite contains a mix of two types of iron, called ferric and ferrous iron. Ferrous iron has been shown to be an effective catalyst for the production of very reactive and damaging molecules called “reactive oxygen species”. Brain damage due to these types of molecules is known to <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19021543">occur very early</a> in the course of Alzheimer’s disease.</p>
<p>A key change in the brain in this disease is the formation of “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senile_plaques">senile plaques</a>”, which are clumps of abnormal protein found between nerve cells. Magnetite particles have been found to be directly associated with these <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep24873">senile plaques</a>, and to enhance the toxicity of the protein that is found in the centre of each one. </p>
<p>To examine if magnetite from external sources might exist in human brains, we used magnetic, electron microscopic and other techniques to examine brain samples from 37 cadavers – aged three to 92 years at time of death – who had lived in Mexico City or in Manchester, UK. We found that many of the highly magnetic brain samples were from people under the age of 40 from Mexico City who had been exposed to high levels of air pollution, and in older Manchester cases (over 65 years at death) with moderate to severe Alzheimer’s disease. </p>
<p>Most of the magnetite particles in the brain samples were spherical and different in size and shape from the magnetite particles that naturally occur in people and animals. They ranged in diameter from 5nm to 150nm and were found together with nanoparticles containing other metals, such as platinum, nickel and cobalt, which would not occur naturally in the brain. We also extracted the magnetite particles from the brains using an enzyme. The enzyme dissolved the brain tissue and left the magnetite particles intact. These particles were then extracted using a magnet. The particles were a striking match for the magnetite nanospheres found in air pollution.</p>
<p>Since less than 5% of cases of Alzheimer’s disease are directly inherited, it is likely that the environment plays a major role in the disease. Because of their combination of being very tiny, known to be toxic to brains, and very commonly found in air pollution, magnetite pollution nanoparticles need to be examined as a possible risk for brain disease, including Alzheimer’s. If a link to human health is discovered, this would have major implications for laws limiting exposure to this type of air pollution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64779/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tiny particles of a mineral known as magnetite may be causing havoc with our health.Barbara Maher, Professor, Environmental science, Lancaster UniversityDavid Allsop, Professor of Neuroscience, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/575172016-05-06T00:59:20Z2016-05-06T00:59:20ZHow corruption is hurting Mexico City’s efforts to tackle air pollution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121077/original/image-20160503-19860-19zangw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Smog over Mexico City: bad air quality has led to limits on when people can drive their cars in the city.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilai/99822452/in/photolist-NKPXQ-NLgQR-NRQDT-NLgUa-NLgZB-NKPPb-NKPGy-NLgJr-NKQ5y-NLgK6-NKPL1-9PBJL-4GLQtC-4uWy2p-9DLE92-bv1sA-9VgQFU-7yK7a-66aC9s-7tRTPt-byB3y-NKQ4y-NKPYW-NKPFm-qNrteu-uhDB7-NRjHd-55begi-NRQCZ-pUdsbZ-NRjE3-a7yVhc-ehGGFL-9jcM4f-7C6f1c-4EVtz5-ENre7w-Cu4ShK-u9kqn9-pCtQv-a1QJF-a1Qko-a1P5m-a1NA5-a1QSE-a1QRk-a1P9s-a1NX9-a1Pvb-a1PnM">ilai/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 15 this year, Mexico City encountered its worst environmental crisis of the <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/mexico-city-declares-first-air-pollution-alert-11-years-n538716">last decade</a>. A gray fog, comprising noxious air pollutants, cast a shadow over the sprawling metropolitan area for two days. Vehicles were ordered off the roads, and people were asked to <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/mexico-city-alarm-bells-ring-over-worst-air-pollution-in-a-decade/a-19116774">remain indoors</a>. </p>
<p>The solution sought to redress the city’s pollution problem was presented two weeks later and has already attracted considerable attention from the international media. <a href="https://www.gob.mx/comisionambiental/estructuras/martin-gutierrez-lacayo">Martín Gutiérrez</a>, head of Mexico City’s environmental agency <a href="http://www.gob.mx/comisionambiental">Comisión Ambiental de la Megalópolis</a>, announced that the city’s residents who own private cars are going back to a program first instituted in 1989 called <a href="http://www2.inecc.gob.mx/publicaciones/libros/394/cap1.pdf">Hoy No Circula</a> (One Day without a Car). The restrictions on vehicle mobility mean that all privately owned vehicles will be off the roads once a week and on one Saturday a month, from April 5 to June 30. </p>
<p>The government had previously abandoned the program due to its proven inefficiency, and, among the city’s residents, the readoption of Hoy No Circula has been viewed as an <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/no-circula-otro-apreton-a-los-cumplidos.html">unpopular approach</a> to manage Mexico City’s undeniable environmental issues. </p>
<p>But the bigger problem with Mexico City’s pollution control efforts lies with governmental institutions and how private interests can successfully subvert the intention of environmental rules like Hoy No Circula. </p>
<h2>Counterproductive outcomes</h2>
<p>Situated in the middle of a valley, Mexico City occupies a particularly vulnerable geographical location. The fact that the most populous city in North America is surrounded by mountains does not work in its favor when it comes to pollution. Indeed, mountains function as retaining walls that aid in the accumulation of unhealthy levels of air pollutants. The fact that the city’s metropolitan area is inhabited by nearly <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2097720_2097772_2097769,00.html">21 million people</a> who use approximately <a href="http://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2014_406.html">5.5 million cars daily</a> only further exacerbates the environmental concerns created by its geography.</p>
<p>When first put into place, Hoy No Circula mandated that each car be kept off the streets one day a week. The day of the week a specific car was to remain immobile was determined by the vehicle’s license plate number.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/121081/original/image-20160503-1305-yz0qbl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Public officials have encouraged citizens of Mexico City to take public transportation, but bus operators have resisted regulations on diesel buses.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/designforhealth/6544366819/in/photolist-aYiAfF-nsmb4i-Jy1WZ-9FGUGA-b8y5PR-fU8LJ-9FGYD3-9FE512-9FDZmX-9FE3oX-9FDYze-9FE41t-3bnLhY-9FGZH5-9FE4pk-d6Gezd-b8xbYp-9FGZe1-9FE37r-4d5xGh-9FDZ3R-b8wJtM-3jJ44E-aYik16-9HxZsB-ePWWrP-bEB4iD-aTzsm8-b8whKi-4UBVdB-fU8LL-aYixfV-nh5wbr-a9obZ-dq7bn8-amvpWS-nyjQxY-nyyUqx-nww8qj-ecRFuq-cHBLZ9-a9ocm-ecQorv-9FGW2N-bwA4Lw-bwA1Nd-PZDzB-9FE23Z-nyhgGa-nh5JK4">designforhealth/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The program quickly produced a counterproductive outcome. Indeed, as a workaround to Hoy No Circula, residents began to <a href="http://expansion.mx/empresas/2016/04/15/el-hoy-no-circula-impulsa-la-venta-de-autos-aun-mas-contaminantes">purchase multiple older cars</a> rather than one environmentally friendly vehicle, only worsening Mexico City’s air pollutant levels.</p>
<p>In 1997, the program was <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/518895.html">modified</a> in order to boost the Mexican automotive industry. From that year onwards, vehicles manufactured in the previous eight years would be exempt from the program so long as they could pass an emissions test twice a year. </p>
<p>Almost two decades later now, in March 2016, Mexico City’s <a href="http://www.aire.df.gob.mx/default.php">Dirección de Monitoreo Atmosférico</a> reported that ozone pollution has reached alarming levels, which has renewed Mexican authorities’ desperate search for a solution to an impending and human-made environmental crisis. </p>
<p>With the enactment of Hoy No Circula this spring, Mexican authorities have <a href="http://nwnoticias.com/#!/noticias/habra-transporte-publico-gratuito-en-la-cdmx-durante-hoy-no-circula-ampliado">encouraged the use of public transportation</a> as an alternative to personal vehicles. However, as anyone who has spent any meaningful time in Mexico City can attest, this is neither a viable nor a safe option for many residents. </p>
<p>According to the World Economic Forum, for example, Mexico City rates second in Latin America for having the <a href="http://nwnoticias.com/#!/noticias/cdmx-la-segunda-mas-con-transporte-publico-mas-peligroso-para-mujeres">most dangerous transportation system for women</a>. In order for citizens to consider using public transportation as an alternative to private cars, measures to ensure the safety of its passengers would first be required. </p>
<p>Since the return to Hoy No Circula, statements have been released by researchers at the <a href="http://www.dgcs.unam.mx/boletin/bdboletin/2016_208.html">Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México</a> and <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org/mexico/es/Prensa1/2016/Marzo/Contingencia-ambiental-punta-del--iceberg-de-la-crisis-de-transporte-y--movilidad-Greenpeace/">Greenpeace</a>, asserting that the instituted restrictions on vehicle mobility do not present a sustainable response to curtail the city’s environmental issues. Much like what happened when the government first introduced the program in 1989, people <a href="https://ahorraseguros.mx/blog/hoy-no-circula-total-fracaso/">have an incentive</a>, once again, to own more than one car and to buy older, high-polluting models in order circumvent the restrictions. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, people who have made financial sacrifices to buy more environmentally friendly cars to decrease their carbon footprint have the same restrictions put on them as owners of more highly polluting cars. </p>
<h2>Environmental effects of institutional corruption</h2>
<p>So far, there has been much discussion on what can be done to thwart air pollution in Mexico City. However, any proposed solution will fall short unless the more systemic issue of institutional corruption is not directly addressed. </p>
<p>Institutional corruption undermines attempts to manage environmental crises (in this case, the amount of harmful emissions released by private automobiles) in a number of ways:</p>
<ol>
<li><p><a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/ciudad-metropoli/2014/impreso/con-8216mordida-8217-se-puede-burlar-el-hoy-no-circula-124924.html">Bribery at regulatory enforcement centers</a>: One of the key causes for the city’s ascendance on pollution indexes is the high pollutant emissions from older vehicles. It is a well-known common practice for owners of older and environmentally inefficient cars to bribe verification centers’ managers in order to receive a pass on the necessary emissions test. </p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/3058475/mapping-mexico-citys-vast-informal-transit-system">Privately owned public transport buses</a>: Private owners of Mexico City’s old, high emission public transportation buses have turned into powerful actors who hold political clout. Consequently, public buses are largely unregulated and do not face any kind of emissions restrictions. These proprietors have long engaged in illegal agreements with authorities in order to <a href="http://www.proyecto40.com/programa/informativo-40-con-lilly-tellez/nota/2015-04-16-14-55/corrupcion-en-el-transporte-publico/">act freely</a>. Notably, the bill <a href="http://transportpolicy.net/index.php?title=Mexico:_Heavy-duty:_Emissions">Norm 044</a> (NOM-044) that was originally drafted in 2009 and would have regulated emissions of heavy diesel vehicles has been <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/886332.html">delayed</a> without any logical explanation. Without the enactment and the enforcement of regulatory measures, bus operators will continue to pollute Mexico City’s environment with impunity.</p></li>
<li><p>New traffic laws: Released in December 2015, the new measures entail a considerable decrease in speed limits on Mexico City’s highways as a way to reduce air pollutants. <a href="http://www.milenio.com/region/nuevo-reglamento-contaminacion-aire-calidad-CdMx-ambiental-emisiones_0_689331093.html">UNAM researchers</a> have stated that the new traffic rules lead to higher fuel consumption as well as longer commuting times. Taken together, these outcomes of the new traffic laws serve only to <a href="http://www.milenio.com/region/nuevo-reglamento-contaminacion-aire-calidad-CdMx-ambiental-emisiones_0_689331093.html">increase emission volumes</a>. <a href="http://autotraffic.com.mx/">Autotraffic</a>, a private Mexican company, was hired to install the new speed traps, which aim to generate 150,000 monthly tickets. Through an arrangement with the government, Autotraffic will receive <a href="http://www.jornada.unam.mx/ultimas/2016/01/01/empresa-que-aplica-fotomultas-se-quedara-con-46-de-los-pagos-132.html">46 percent from the total amount of revenues</a> collected from the tickets. This is illustrative of the problematic ways in which the proposed solution to the environmental crisis is being shouldered by ordinary citizens, while the government continues to advance the interests of private businesses.</p></li>
<li><p><a href="http://www.milenio.com/df/desvio_de_recursos_l12-linea_12_recursos-cierre_l12-cierran_estaciones_l12_0_369563299.html">Resource embezzlement</a>: Efforts to provide new public transportation options have been negatively impacted by corrupt practices. The most recent example of this is Mexico City’s subway line inaugurated in 2012, which would transport over 400,000 passengers on a daily basis. Less than two years after its launch, it was closed down when <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/linea-12-una-estafa-impune.html">structural irregularities</a> that endangered users were identified. The <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/ciudad-metropoli/2014/impreso/aumento-70-el-costo-de-la-linea-12-122153.html">total cost</a> of building the subway line was US$1.5 billion, 70 percent over the original budget. <a href="http://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/nacional/de-que-se-le-acusa-a-horcasitas-en-el-caso-linea-12.html">Enrique Horcasitas</a>, the former director of the project, is <a href="http://lopezdoriga.com/nacional/vuelven-a-activar-orden-de-aprension-por-horcasitas/">currently a fugitive</a>. He has been accused of authorizing payments to a private company for construction work that never took place.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Mexico City residents and relevant government authorities face a looming question in light of recent events: are initiatives to have fewer cars on the roads sufficient to combat air pollution? It certainly appears that they are not. For real change to happen, the enactment of public policy must come hand in hand with measures to eliminate institutional corruption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paulina Segarra receives research funding through a doctoral fellowship from Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ajnesh Prasad receives grant funding through a Newton Advanced Fellowship (AF150261) from the British Academy</span></em></p>Mexico City is suffering through an air quality crisis this spring, but institutional corruption is making the proposed solution – restricting car usage – ineffective.Paulina Segarra, Ph.D. Candidate , Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de MonterreyAjnesh Prasad, Research Professor, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de MonterreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.