Showing posts with label Mexico's cities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico's cities. Show all posts

Nov 22, 2012

The man who remade Mexico City

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has given Mexico's capital – once infamous for its pollution, lawlessness, and general chaos – new appeal thanks to environmental and civic programs.

The Christian Science Monitor By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / November 22, 2012

Mexico  City

Jose Guadalupe Gonzalez walks among giant paper-mache renderings of fantastical dragons and serpents, called alebrijes, with his wife and two teenage daughters in the middle of Mexico City’s Zocalo to celebrate Day of the Dead. Later, the family considered catching a play for free, also in the main plaza, or strolling along the nearby, new pedestrian streets of downtown Mexico.

In the winter the Gonzalez family goes ice-skating in the same spot. And on Sundays, any time of the year, they can hop on free bicycles and ride along Reforma, the city's most icononic thoroughfare.

In many ways, Mr. Gonzalez says his native city is an unrecognizable place, having transformed under leftist administrations and particularly the city’s outgoing Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who has become an international star of sorts among the municipal set.  Read more. 


Nov 4, 2012

'Social Cleansing' in Mexican Cities: Homeless People and Panhandlers Targeted by Police

AlterNet By Emilio Godoy, November 2, 2012

Activists say the removal of homeless and poor people to places outside city limits violates their human rights.

Non-governmental organisations in Mexico are presenting a complaint Friday Nov. 2 before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights about government mistreatment and “social cleansing” of thousands of people living on the street in several of the country’s cities.

Among the cases cited by the plaintiffs are Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, on the U.S. border, where they allege that homeless people and panhandlers are being removed outside the city limits by the police.

The same practice, with variations, is occurring in the western city of Guadalajara, which has an urban planning programme designed to remove the homeless from the centre of the city, and in Mexico City itself, where they are being taken from the historic centre of the city and forced to live under bridges, viaducts or elevated highways, increasing their vulnerability.  Read more.