Op-ed: Is Mexico the Comeback Kid?

By Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2/26/2013

Visiting Mexico this past week reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from my days in Beirut. It was when a hostess asked her dinner guests during the Lebanese civil war: “Would you like to eat now or wait for the cease-fire?” One of the lessons of both Mexico and Lebanon is how irrepressible is the human spirit — that no matter how violent a country becomes, people will adapt and take risks to innovate or to make profits or get to school or to just have fun.

That is a key reason that Mexico is making something of a comeback these days. Whether it will make it back in a sustainable way is unclear. Mexico still has huge problems: stifling monopolies in energy, telecom and media; a weak K-12 education system; violent cartels; and a corrupt police and judiciary. Together, they will keep a lid on Mexico’s prospects if they’re not addressed, the human spirit notwithstanding.

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Survey shows that Mexico’s youth distrusts IFE (Spanish)

De acuerdo con la Encuesta de Cultura Política de los Jóvenes 2012, los ciudadanos de entre 18 y 29 años confían “poco” en el Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE) y en el Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF), aunque la mayoría cree que ambas instituciones son imparciales y autónomas.

El estudio, elaborado por el Colegio de México para el Centro de Desarrollo Democrático del IFE, revela que los jóvenes se informaron sobre los candidatos presidenciales y sus campañas a través de los spots de televisión, y 30% vio los dos debates.

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Mexico shudders at rise of rebellious reggaetoneros

Chicago Tribune, 8/20/21

Reggaeton, a Caribbean fusion of hip hop with Latin timbres, is wildly popular across Latin America but is raising eyebrows in conservative Mexico City.

Fans of the sexually explicit music have become Mexico’s persona non grata of the moment, blamed for a string of offenses ranging from theft to drug dealing…

Sociologists and human rights advocates say reggaetoneros are not violent criminals but rather the latest subculture to emerge from the ranks of Mexico’s disadvantaged youth, who struggle to find gainful employment in a country where nearly every second person lives in poverty but which is also home to Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man.

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41 Children Go Missing Each Day in Mexico: NGO

InSight Crime, 8/22/11

The National Foundation for Investigations into Stolen and Disappeared Children (Fundacion Nacional de Investigaciones de Niños Robados y Desaparecidos) says that an average of 41 children a day have been reported missing over the past five years. Only one in 10 cases handled by the foundation end with the child being rescued, the organization’s spokeswoman said. According to data from Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office, 30,000 of the 75,000 children reported missing have been rescued.

According to a report prepared last year for the United Nations, up to 35,000 minors have been recruited by drug trafficking gangs since 2006. Under Mexican law, minors cannot serve prison sentences longer than three years, which may explain why some gangs have turned to recruiting teen hitmen, including 14-year-old Edgar Jimenez, alias “El Ponchis,” a U.S. citizen charged with kidnapping and homicide in July.

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Young and desperate for a job in Mexico

Los Angeles Times, 8/21/11

Cristina De Anda clutches a fistful of fliers for low-paying jobs: telephone operator, sales clerk, security guard. She’s not choosy.

“Anything they give me, whatever,” says De Anda, 19, who has found herself in a rough Mexican job market since graduating from high school last month.

Competition for low-wage work reflects one of Mexico’s biggest problems since the 2008-09 downturn: the inability to generate real jobs. The shortage hits young people hard, with 4 in 10 of Mexico’s unemployed in their 20s. Throw in teenagers and the share rises to more than half.

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Bloomberg to spend millions of his money to help black, Latino males

CNN, 8/4/11

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday announced the launch of a major policy initiative to aid the city’s minority youth.

And he’s footing a good chunk of the bill himself.

The Young Men’s Initiative is the “nation’s most comprehensive effort to tackle disparities between young black and Latino males and their peers,” a news release said.

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Ataca NY racismo contra latinos y negros (in Spanish)

Reforma, 8/4/11

La Alcaldía de Nueva York lanzó un millonario plan destinado a vencer las disparidades entre los jóvenes blancos, latinos y afroamericanos, tras un estudio que puso a la luz cifras de mayor desempleo, crimen y pobreza entre estas minorías.

“Es la primera vez que Nueva York u otra gran ciudad estadounidense compromete a cada agencia local relevante en un esfuerzo colectivo para mejorar los resultados para los jóvenes negros y latinos”, indico el Alcalde, Michael Bloomberg.

La “Iniciativa para los Jóvenes”, con duración de tres años, prevé una inversión de 127 millones de dólares y buscará reintegrar al mercado laboral o educativo a los casi 30 mil neoyorquinos, en su mayoría de origen hispano o afroamericano, en libertad condicional.

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Teen killer’s light sentence dismays a violence-weary Mexico

Christian Science Monitor, 7/28/11

When a teenager coldly confessed to his role in the assassination of four people, who were found beheaded and hanging from a bridge in Central Mexico last year, the nation was stunned. From new mothers to older Mexicans who have watched violence spiral in the past decade, they hoped that the shocking case would at least be a wakeup for a society that appears increasingly inured to murder.

This week, however, many of them are reacting bitterly to the sentence that was just handed down. Edgar Jimenez, better known as “El Ponchis” and dubbed by the media here as the “boy killer,” received three years in juvenile detention, a sixth of which he has already served. It is the maximum that the state of Morelos allows for minors.

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Mexican drug cartels find youths to be easy prey

The Los Angeles Times, 12/18/2010

The curly-haired suspect in the sweatshirt faced the flash of news cameras, looking impossibly small. ”When did you start to kill?” he was asked. “How much did you earn?” “How many did you execute?”

He said he began killing at age 11. A drug cartel paid him $200 a week. He’d killed four people. ”How?” came the final question. ”I cut their throats,” he replied. Then masked Mexican soldiers hustled him off, the way they do other drug suspects.

The detainee’s name was Edgar Jimenez Lugo, but everyone knew him as Ponchi. He’s 14 years old.

In shin-length shorts and flip-flops, the San Diego-born boy was a cheerful fixture on the pothole-marked streets of his neighborhood on the gritty side of Jiutepec, a town near Cuernavaca that’s a weekend retreat for residents of Mexico City. But whispers swirled that he’d fallen in with a dangerous crowd, that he was riding around in spiffy cars.

Edgar’s father, David Jimenez, said he had caught the boy smelling of alcohol at a local basketball court, but nothing worse. He had to admit, though, that he had no idea how his son spent his time.

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Mexico and Canada Launch a Temporary Work Program for Youths

SRE via Envision Blog, 10/27/2010

The program is designed for Mexican and Canadian students and graduates between the ages of 18 and 29 who wish to obtain a work permit in Mexico or Canada for up to 12 months.

Beginning on November 1, the Mexican and Canadian governments will begin accepting applications from youths interested in taking advantage of the Youth Mobility Program.

The governments of Mexico and Canada have launched a program that enables students and graduates between 18 and 29 years of age to obtain a work permit for up to 12 months in order to further their professional development.

Through a Memorandum of Understanding, the governments of Mexico and Canada have agreed to issue 200 visas to youths who wish to obtain a temporary permit to work during vacations, as young professionals or as interns in order to promote cultural exchanges, their personal development and even to allow them to improve their ability to speak the language or languages of the host country.

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