Back in Vienna, VA. Already missing Mexico. One last commentary on my trip before going back to a more “normal” publishing schedule.
There were a lot of Chinese vehicles on the road. I wrote about that for World Politics Review this week. Gift link is here.
People have jobs, but stuff is expensive. Mexico has a dynamic economy, definitely no recession here, but wages aren’t keeping up with prices. I can definitely understand why people in the capital are angry at the large number of foreigners who are now living in key areas of Mexico City. I could afford things, but a lot of prices seemed far too close to US prices to be affordable for people living on an average salary in Mexico (also, the relatively strong Mexican peso and weak dollar didn’t make them particularly cheap for me).
Security is solid in the Mexico City bubble1, bad on the outskirts. General day-to-day security in the main business and tourist areas of Mexico City is way better than it is in Bogota, Rio, Lima, or even some major US cities. Importantly, locals act as if it’s secure. I watched people set their phones down on tables at outdoor dining areas in a way that would have led to theft in other cities. Nobody is walking around expecting to get mugged.2 Mexico City is safe, and people know it’s safe, even if they are chattering about how bad the security is in the country.
However, as I spoke with people around Mexico City, it became clear that outside the bubble, crime remains a real problem. The millions of people who commute daily from Edomex or the eastern boroughs of the city to the bubble come from a very different environment where crime is much more part of their daily lives.
Mexico City’s police have become far more militarized. A decade ago, I remember commenting on the fact you couldn’t walk a block in Polanco without stumbling over a police officer. That’s still true. But the police presence in “the bubble” today is a mixture of community policing (officers wandering around interacting with people) and patrols of cops on pickup trucks and SUVs looking intimidating, which weren’t as common in the past. I regularly saw convoys of multiple police vehicles with lights on patrolling streets in the downtown area with no apparent destination. Inside of Parque Lincoln, there is a near-permanent presence of three police pickups with officers who look ready to roll to the next big gun battle3. In Quintana Roo, I noted the militarization including National Guard, Navy and Army. Here it was all “civilian” police, but on a different level than the past.
It doesn’t feel like a dictatorship. I spoke with some people about the consolidation of the Morena party, the weakening of institutions, judicial reform, and the treatment of civil society. All very concerning. But at no point did I have a feeling that Mexico was on track to be the next big authoritarian shift on par with Nicaragua or El Salvador. Nor did I have a sense that this is paralleling the perfect dictatorship4 of the PRI of the 1960s or 70s. I have concerns about where Mexico’s democracy is going, but I didn’t get a sense that it was any weaker than it was ten years ago under Peña Nieto. That said, re-reading the comment above about roving police patrols, there is an uncomfortable tension between my comments on democracy and the increased militarization.
Concern about corruption is at the top of the agenda; trust in civilian institutions and politicians is very low. There are apparently two points of view in Mexico: People who think President Sheinbaum is trying hard and every other politician is corrupt, and people who think every politician including the president and her administration is corrupt. No matter whether people supported or opposed Sheinbaum, no conversation about politics occurred without complaints about pervasive and systemic corruption and the inability of institutions to combat it. My general sense was that this is the top political issue in the country and a concern on the minds of voters. Importantly, I got the sense that Sheinbaum supporters5 are angry about corruption in the Morena party. I think that gives the president more political space to act against the corruption around her.
Street tacos are amazing. Nothing has changed there.
Thanks for reading.
I spent this whole two week trip to Mexico (including one week on vacation) in “the bubble.” I largely stayed in and around neighborhoods and roads where tourists and foreigners and wealthy Mexicans are. No trips last week to Iztapalapa, Tepito, or the Neza market for me. Everything I write is biased by that fact.
Contrast with Santiago, Chile, which probably has better security statistics than CDMX, but where many Chileans seem to think crime is right around the corner, preparing to stab them.
Not surprisingly, there were no big gun battles in Polanco while I was there. One of my kids asked whether those officers in Parque Lincoln had the easiest job in the city. I gave him a longer and more detailed answer about security issues than he was probably asking for.
The AI I used to review/edit this column said I needed to define “perfect dictatorship” and cite Mario Vargas Llosa. I think you’re all too smart to need that.
Getting to speak with a few actual Sheinbaum supporters was a nice way of getting outside my usual info bubble. So many analysts and business executives I speak with more regularly are very critical of the president or have mixed feelings about her. It was useful to talk to some of the >60% of Mexican who approve of her and do so more fully.
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