Op-ed: Adding Absurdity to Tragedy

By Carlos Puig, The New York Times, 3/8/2013

It’s one of the trendiest, most expensive and nicest pieces of land around. It’s in Polanco, the city’s most expensive neighborhood, and on a corner of Paseo de la Reforma, the capital’s most important avenue. Less than two kilometers away from the president’s residence and just five blocks from Masaryk Street, our own Park Avenue. It occupies 1,500 square meters of Chapultepec, the park in the middle of Mexico City.

And it is this piece of prime real estate that last year, under heavy pressure from human rights organizations, the government designated for a memorial to honor the victims of drug-related violence.

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Statue of a Foreign Autocrat Sits Uneasily With Some

The New York Times, 11/12/2012

Marcelo Ebrard

When the mayor inaugurated a pretty little garden fronted by a very large statue at the edge of the central Chapultepec Park last summer, it seemed another step forward in his drive to improve the quality of life in this impossible city.

But a quick check on Google might have spared Mayor Marcelo Ebrard from what happened next.

Speaking off the cuff, the mayor praised the statue’s subject — a complete stranger to many Mexico City residents — as “a great political leader, a statesman.”

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Mexico student protests cause election stir

Los Angeles Times, 5\25\2012

It’s almost starting to look like a movement.

Thousands of university students have poured into the streets of Mexico City for the second time in a week to protest the way the nation’s upcoming presidential election is being run and, more specifically, covered in the Mexican media.

They are especially incensed that victory by Enrique Peña Nieto on July 1 is often portrayed as a fait accompli.

About 15,000 people (by city officials’ count) gathered Wednesday evening at the controversial Pillar of Light monument (seen by many here as a government boondoggle) and marched down the iconic Paseo de la Reforma.

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In Mexico, Tying the City in Knots Is a Capital Idea

Los Angeles Times, 11/12/09

Reporting from Mexico City – Take world-class traffic congestion. Add protesters, tens of thousands of them, until streets become a thick, impenetrable mass. Let angry horn-blowing begin. Repeat, over and over.

There are times in Mexico’s teeming capital when you can’t get there from here. Usually, it’s a question of too many cars on too few streets. But on many other days — Wednesday, for example — the paralysis is caused by street demonstrations, which are as worthy an emblem of Mexico City as the Angel of Independence statue on Paseo de la Reforma, where marchers often gather.

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