Social housing in Mexico City. Another 10,000 units coming.
The Mexico City government is aiming for 10,000 new social housing units to be built in the next five years as part of a partnership with the private sector.
The government said in its official gazette that it will invest 23 billion pesos (US $1.2 billion) in social housing in 12 real estate corridors in central Mexico City. The project is part of the Special Program for Urban Regeneration and Inclusive Housing.
Companies that build in the corridors – located in the historic center and along major roads leading into the downtown, among other areas – will be required to set aside 30% of the stock in their projects to social housing.
Workers with monthly salaries between 7,000 and 28,000 pesos (US $365 to $1,460) will be eligible to purchase the units with loans from federal government housing funds Infonavit and Fovissste or Mexico City’s Institute of Housing.
Sales are restricted to people who don’t already own property. Purchasers will not be able to sell their units for a period of five years after deeds are issued.
Prices are expected to start at 450,000 pesos (US $23,500) and go up to about 1 million pesos (US $52,000).
Half of the social housing will be two-bedroom apartments and the other half will be of varying sizes depending on the purchasers’ needs.
Pablo Benlliure Bilbao, director of planning at the Secretariat of Urban Development and Housing, said the first units will be completed at the end of 2020.
He said that 1,250 social housing apartments will be built per year, which would mean construction of 6,250 apartments by the end of 2024: a shortfall of 3,750 compared to the government’s stated goal.
Among the real estate corridors on which the social housing will be built are Eje Central, Hidalgo avenue, Chapultepec avenue, Paseo de la Reforma and Insurgentes Norte.
Across the 12 corridors, there are 800 vacant, abandoned or underused lots, Benlliure said.
De Niro and Aparicio among guests at Los Cabos film festival this month.
Yalitza Aparicio and Robert De Niro are among the noteworthy guests invited to the eighth annual Los Cabos International Film Festival later this month.
The theme of this year’s festival is “Fantastic Women,” the goal of which is to make women’s contributions to cinema more visible.
As spokesperson for the campaign, the Academy Award-nominated Aparicio will receive a special recognition. She will also hold a discussion with Chilean actress Daniela Vega, star of the 2017 film Una mujer fantástica (A Fantastic Woman), about the need for women being included both in the cinematic sphere and elsewhere.
The festival’s executive director, Alejandra Paulín, said the event will also comment on the subject of gender equality, which is apparent in the lineup of talks and featured films.
There will be a retrospective of award-winning Salvadoran director Tatiana Huezo and a showing of the trailer for Huezo’s first fictional feature film, titled Noches de fuego (Nights of Fire), which received developmental support from the festival’s Gabriel Figueroa Film Fund.
Also in attendance will be cinematographer Ellen Kuras, known for her work on the films Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Blow, both of which will be shown at the festival.
Paulín confirmed that the festival will also include an appearance by Robert De Niro, who will attend the showing of the latest film by Martin Scorsese, The Irishman, in which De Niro plays the starring role.
He will be accompanied by the Mexican artists involved in making the film: cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto and producer Gastón Pavlovich.
To be held from November 13-17, the Los Cabos International Film Festival will close with a showing of the film Jojo Rabbit, by director Taika Waititi.
Employees in the industrial sector are among those who will benefit.
One hundred Mexican companies have announced they will raise the minimum monthly salary of their employees to 6,500 pesos (US $340).
Corporate directors from Citibanamex, Corporación Zapata, Tajín and Grupo Pochteca, representing the 100-member organization Empresas Por El Bienestar (Companies for Wellbeing), told a press conference on Wednesday that the initiative will contribute to the construction of a “middle-class Mexico.”
“Starting from a base of the average home containing 1.7 workers, the 6,500-peso monthly payment will put us just above the poverty threshold determined by [the social development agency] Coneval,” they told reporters.
The company representatives emphasized that participation is not obligatory, but the group has been working on the initiative for five years and expects it to have a positive impact that will be reflected in the growth of the country.
“The impact in the short and long term will be positive, in the consumption and incomes of Mexican families. It will become a virtuous cycle and that’s why we’re making this sacrifice to push the country’s economy to be even stronger.”
They stressed that 48% of formal jobs in the country offer less than 6,500 pesos per month, but the companies in the group will all pay all their employees at least that much beginning on December 1.
Although the first year of President López Obrador’s administration has brought doubt to many in the private sector, the 100 companies see a more favorable and receptive environment ahead.
In accordance with what they have seen in the current international economic climate, they believe they can implement the change without causing higher inflation.
“These 100 companies promise that [the raise] will not have a negative impact on prices, therefore it won’t have an inflationary effect . . . the objective is to increase the attraction of formal employment.”
A deputy in the Guerrero state Congress has proposed an initiative that would punish repeat rapists and pedophiles with chemical castration.
Morena party Deputy Marco Antonio Cabada Arias directed the initiative to the federal Congress in order for a change to be made to the constitution.
“The goal of the current initiative is to impose a maximum penalty of chemical castration on repeat rapists and pedophiles, which consists of the provision of medicine that reduces the libido,” he said.
Cabada said that official data reveal that 51 women are sexually assaulted daily in Mexico, a number that he believes makes it necessary to consider chemical castration as a punishment and deterrent.
He added that the chemical process is different from surgical castration in that it does not involve the removal of the testicles, and the duration of chemical castration can vary depending on the dosage, as the effects are reversed once the medication is suspended.
According to data from the National Statistics Institute (Inegi), the nationwide rate for child rape is 1,764 of every 100,000 people, and 5,000 of every 100,000 are touched inappropriately.
Cabada said that Tlaxcala, Querétaro and Chihuahua are the states with the highest rates of the types of crimes his bill aims to address.
“Among the reported cases, we find sexual crimes in which the figures add up to 1,530 cases of abuse in a single month, giving an average of 51 women sexually assaulted each day, [and] leaving us with a dark figure of unknown victims who do not report the crimes out of fear of retaliation.”
This is not the first time that chemical castration has been considered as a legal recourse to punish and deter sexual assault in Mexico.
The legislator reminded the Congress that a similar initiative was proposed in the Mexico City Congress on September 13. And in December 2018, Senator Alejandro Armenta Mier also proposed a chemical castration initiative.
At least nine people were killed and 16 vehicles set on fire during a wave of gang violence in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, on Tuesday but the state sees no connection with Monday’s attack on women and children near the Sonora border.
Authorities said that gunmen carried out at least six different attacks in the border city. Some of the victims burned to death, the newspaper Reforma reported.
At 2:00am, four armed men stopped a transit bus in which factory workers were traveling. They doused the bus with gasoline, blocked its doors and set it on fire.
Nine people inside managed to escape via the windows but sustained first and second degree burns and were taken to hospital.
Four factory-owned buses parked in three different Juárez neighborhoods were also set alight early Tuesday morning.
A second transit bus suffered the same fate after it was stopped while traveling on the Juárez-Porvenir highway near the town of Loma Blanca, 20 kilometers southeast of the border city. The passengers managed to escape.
Ten cars were also set ablaze in different parts of Ciudad Juárez.
Later Tuesday, there was an armed attack at a building next to the Juárez branch of the Chihuahua Attorney General’s Office during which a security guard was wounded.
State authorities issued a red alert in response to the wave of violence across the city.
Attorney General César Peniche said there was no evidence of any connection between the violence in Juárez and the attack on a Mormon family on Monday.Federal authorities believe it could have been perpetrated by La Línea, a gang with links to the Juárez Cartel.
He said that the burning of buses appeared to be a strategy by crime groups to distract authorities that were carrying out an operation to detect vehicles transporting drugs, weapons and other illegal goods, and an inspection inside a state penitentiary.
“The reaction of criminal groups was aimed at trying to distract the actions of the three levels of government in Ciudad Juárez,” Peniche said.
A vehicle in which members of the LeBarón family were killed and burned on Monday.
President López Obrador declined an offer from United States President Donald Trump to help Mexico combat organized crime after Monday’s attack on a Mormon family near the Sonora-Chihuahua border, but federal lawmakers are more open to the idea.
“If Mexico needs or requests help in cleaning out these monsters, the United States stands ready, willing & able to get involved and do the job quickly and effectively. The great new president of Mexico has made this a big issue, but the cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!” he wrote.
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the Earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!” Trump said.
López Obrador spoke to the U.S. president Tuesday about the attack on members of the LeBarón family but, according to Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, Trump’s proposal to “wage war” on cartels was not discussed.
López Obrador told reporters earlier Tuesday that his response to Trump’s offer was a “categorical no,” explaining “we have to act independently in accordance with our constitution.”
“. . . We don’t need the intervention of a foreign government to attend to these cases . . . We are a free and sovereign country, another government cannot intervene in our territory if there isn’t a cooperation agreement and of course, without an express request on our part . . .” he said.
The president reiterated his commitment to pacifying the country not by going down “the well-worn path” of fighting fire with fire but by pursuing policies and programs of development and well-being, a strategy he refers to as “abrazos, no balazos” (hugs, not bullets).
“We’re already getting results and we’re going to get more,” López Obrador said, adding that the actions of criminal groups “will not derail us.”
However, the government’s non-confrontational security strategy has come under intense pressure in the wake of a cartel ambush in Michoacán that killed 13 state police on October 14, a botched attempt to arrest one of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán’s sons that triggered a wave of cartel attacks in Culiacán, Sinaloa, later the same week and Monday’s attack on the LeBarón family.
Advocating for the United States government to do more to combat crime in Mexico, The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial published Tuesday that “drug gangs control huge swathes of the country.”
It suggested that if Mexico cannot control the violence generated by narco-traffickers the U.S. should intervene to protect its citizens in both countries.
The Drug Enforcement Administration should be capable of identifying and locating those responsible for the attack and would be a sign that U.S. justice “has a great reach,” the newspaper said.
It also stated “a U.S. military operation cannot be ruled out.”
In light of the security situation – Mexico is on track to record its most violent year in recent history – opposition lawmakers as well as those with the ruling Morena party believe that accepting some assistance from the United States to combat criminal organizations and investigate Monday’s attack is the right thing to do.
“We mustn’t look at it [the United States offer] dogmatically . . . If they can provide information to capture the culprits, it’s welcome,” said Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the Senate.
“I would not completely disagree with collaboration,” Monreal said, adding that he believed that the United States could assist the investigation into Monday’s attack “without compromising national sovereignty.”
“I believe that as long as it’s a respectful collaboration, without damaging [our] sovereignty, without harming the national state, it’s the right thing to do,” he said.
Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, a senator with the Institutional Revolutionary Party, said that security cooperation with the United States is normal and that considering that the victims of Monday’s attacks were citizens of that country, collaboration on the case is logical.
National Action Party Senator Julen Rementería said that “any assistance on security matters is good” although he added that he wasn’t supportive of Trump’s proposal to “wage war on the drug cartels.”
Instead, U.S. assistance should could come mainly in the form of intelligence sharing, he said.
Miguel Ángel Mancera of the Democratic Revolution Party said that Mexico should accept assistance from the United States to stop the illegal trafficking of arms into the country.
The U.S. “can help Mexico with technology, with resources, to avoid the entry of firearms,” the senator said.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said on Wednesday that the weapons used in the attack on the LeBarón family were made in the United States.
Julian LeBarón, a relative of Monday’s victims and an anti-crime activist, is also supportive of collaborating with the United States on the investigation into the ambush, which federal authorities believe could have been perpetrated by La Línea, a gang with links to the Juárez Cartel.
“We will accept help from the United States and wherever it comes from until we know the truth about what happened,” he told the newspaper Reforma.
The government’s security strategy is “not working,” he said. “We have terrible violence in the whole country, a lot of murders every day and justice is never served.”
Asked whether members of the Mormon community in northern Mexico could form their own self-defense force, LeBarón responded:
“I think that every individual has the right to defend himself if he doesn’t get defense elsewhere but we’re civilized people and we understand that due process is necessary . . . We don’t want to move into [carrying out] any kind of lynchings but we obviously believe that . . . we have the right at all times to defend our lives and our freedom.”
Leaving Mexico is not an option, he added.
“We were born in Mexico, we’re Mexicans and for nothing will we give into evil and the criminals, we’re going to defend what we’ve inherited and we’re going to defend what is ours.”
A Mexican market is a great place to shop for almost anything.
Since I moved to Mexico, grocery shopping has become one of my most enjoyable activities. In fact, when I have visitors, it’s one of the first things I do with them.
Why? Because the local mercado, or market, is just a hoot.
There’s just no way not to smile as you wander through aisles crammed with stalls offering everything from voodoo spells and evil-looking statues to Frida Kahlo shopping bags, pure vanilla extract (about US $8 for 16 oz.) and caramelized sweet potatoes.
Ladies prepping nopal cactus – a staple in Mexican cuisine, added to salsas, stews and tacos – sit between colorful piñatas for sale and fishmongers with fresh shrimp of all sizes, deep red tuna or just-caught snapper (under $5 a pound, in season) smoked marlin (the delicious south-of-the-border replacement for lox).
There are literally piles of fresh fruits and veggies, spices and dried herbs, cheeses, fresh seafood, and meats (cut to order!) and bakery-fresh pastries. It’s a chaotic flurry of activity that definitely qualifies as delicious entertainment in my book.
Then there’s all the other “stuff:” souvenir hats, t-shirts and shot glasses, clothing, purses and luggage, shoes, toys, bobble-head refrigerator magnets, sunglasses, kitchenware. You never know what you’ll find! And around the outside of the market, there are usually all sorts of food stands, with tacos, agua fresca, cups of cut-up fruit and more.
A vendor sells cups full of fresh fruit and more.
Most folks who move to Mexico find shopping at their local mercado gets them the best prices, the biggest selection of local and in-season produce, like lychees or mangos. (Where I live, mangos in season are $1 for 5 lbs., which is about eight.)
It’s also a rich cultural experience that never gets old. While you may still want to go to a “regular” grocery store for certain items (like imported cheeses, alcohol and a bigger selection of packaged goods), your local market can provide you with all the basics and is also a good way to meet your neighbors and learn about Mexican cuisine.
Although you might not be looking at signs, a simple Spanish lesson may be helpful: Adding the suffix –ría to a word indicates what is happening there. So, at a carnicería, meat “happens,” at a dulcería, candies “happen.”
You’ll see cremerías (dairy products), panaderías (breads and pastries), fruterías (fruits) and maybe loncherías (lunch places).
Be forewarned that the meat section can be off-putting, piled as it is with parts of animals we don’t usually see: whole heads, feet, tongues, beaks, et al. All parts — and I mean all — are sold.
Everything can be cut to order; learn the words in Spanish so you can ask for what you want. Meat is displayed in open-top refrigerated counters, and despite what seems like a shocking lack of hygiene to our expat minds, this is how it’s done here. (That said, it can’t hurt to go to what looks like the cleanest and busiest butcher stand.)
I have a favorite chicken vendor, who receives fresh (not frozen), whole chickens every morning and will cut to order as you like. The other day I asked if he could grind the meat so I could make burgers. Chava said he didn’t have a grinder, but that he could chop it very, very fine. He suggested leg meat would have the most flavor.
In the blink of an eye he had the skin off and the meat fileted from six drumsticks, then proceeded to mince the meat for about 20 minutes, all the while chatting with me and other customers. He ended up with enough chicken for four good-size burgers. And the cost? Forty-eight pesos, barely $2.50. What’s not to love?!
Fresh fish and shellfish are also sold from open refrigerated counters, often with ice on top too. The vendor will ask if you want bones cut out or the fish fileted thin. In season, there’s farmed and wild shrimp, clams, scallops and sometimes crabs. They also have ground fish for making “meatballs” for soup (quite yummy!) or burgers.
There are also stands with all kinds of dried fruits, nuts and seeds, often packaged in small bags that are just right for snacking or taking on trips. And of course you’ll find a big selection of dried chiles and spices, some familiar and some not.
Dried beans, rice, tamarind, fresh turmeric and ginger root, Jamaica flowers (for tea), and piloncillo – raw brown sugar, in small blocks – are all sold by the ounce. Although it’s a bit of work to grate the piloncillo for baking and such, the flavor is delicious and I find it well worth the effort.
I also find it charming and convenient that produce vendors will make packages of, say, soup ingredients: an onion, half an ear of corn, a handful of cilantro, two tomatoes, a potato, some celery and maybe cabbage. These will cost about $1 and are just right for throwing into a pot with some sort of protein, rice or pasta, salt and spices. Voila!
Half a papaya, cantaloupe, head of lettuce, cabbage or watermelon; two stalks of celery, a handful of fresh parsley, one egg – anything and everything is happily possible.
Rather than feeling bewildered by the warren of aisles and apparent chaos you’ll encounter, try to go with the flow and take time to explore. Eventually it will start to make sense, and you’ll see different sections, with butchers, bakeries and produce stands more or less clustered together.
Scattered throughout will be deli-like stands with dairy products, fresh cheeses, eggs (often sold by weight, about 10 for $1) tortillas and such, and also abarrotes shops, with canned and packaged goods. Bringing your own shopping bag will make it easier to carry your purchases.
Janet Blaser of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, has been a writer, editor and storyteller her entire life and her work has appeared in numerous travel and expat publications as well as newspapers and magazines. Her first book, Why We Left: An Anthology of American Women Expats, is available on Amazon. Contact Janet or read her blog at whyweleftamerica.com.
One of the three vehicles in which family members were traveling.
The attackers who killed three women and six children near the Sonora-Chihuahua border on Monday didn’t mistake their victims for members of a rival gang, say family members, but federal authorities say evidence shows otherwise.
Security Secretary Alfonso Durazo said on Tuesday that the three SUVs in which members of the LeBarón family were traveling may have been mistaken by a criminal organization for those of a rival gang. A splinter cell of the Sinaloa Cartel known as Los Salazar is known to operate in the area as is La Línea, which has links to the Juárez Cartel.
Today, a senior military official suggested a cell of the latter was sent to the area where members of the LeBarón family were killed after a confrontation Monday in Agua Prieta between the two gangs.
La Línea, said Brigadier General Homero Mendoza Ruiz, was reacting to a possible incursion into its territory by members of Los Salazar.
But members of the LeBarón family, part of a breakaway fundamentalist Mormon community that has lived in Mexico for decades, rejected the hypothesis.
The nine victims in Monday’s attack.
“All the conclusions that we’ve reached is that it was something that was almost premeditated against the community,” Adrián LeBarón, father of victim Rhonita Maria Miller, told the newspaper Milenio.
“They knew that they were killing women and children. There are kids who say they saw when their aunt got out of the vehicle and raised her hands. They saw when she was killed, where’s the confusion?” he said, responding to Durazo’s claim that there was confusion on the part of the criminal gangs involved.
The attack occurred on Monday shortly after the three vehicles left La Mora, a small Mormon community in the mountains of Sonora.
According to a Facebook post by LeBarón family cousin Kendra Lee Miller, two mothers and their children were traveling to Chihuahua to visit family while a third woman was on her way to pick up her husband from the airport in Phoenix, Arizona. A total of 14 children were traveling in the three vehicles.
The vehicle in which 30-year-old Rhonita Miller and four of her seven children were traveling “was found full of bullet holes and completely ablaze,” Kendra Miller said.
All five were “burned to mostly ashes” with “only a few charred bones left to identify” the victims, she said.
When two of the vehicles traveling farther ahead on the remote dirt road were fired upon, Miller said that 31-year-old Christina Marie Langford Johnson “jumped out waving her arms to let the attackers know that it was women and children in the vehicles.”
However, she was still shot and killed. “She gave her life to try and save the rest,” Miller wrote. Her seven-month-old baby girl was uninjured in the attack.
Dawna Ray Langford, who was traveling with nine children, was also killed along with two of her sons, aged 2 and 11.
Another of her sons, 13-year-old Devin Blake Langford, hid his six surviving brothers and sisters – five of whom had been wounded – in bushes and “covered them with branches to keep them safe while he went for help,” Miller said.
He arrived at La Mora at 5:30pm, six hours after the ambush occurred, and raised the alarm.
Julián LeBarón said in an interview that the boy was shot at on his way back to the family ranch but he avoided injury. Men at the ranch armed themselves and set off to get the surviving children.
Survivors grieve at the crime scene.
As help was taking a long time to arrive, 9-year-old Mckenzie Rayne Langford, who had sustained a bullet graze to her arm, also set out to seek assistance.
According to Miller, the men found the hidden children and the seven-month-old baby, who remained in her baby seat in a bullet-riddled vehicle. The baby seat appeared to have been hurriedly placed on the floor of the vehicle by her mother for protection, she said.
Adrián LeBarón told Milenio there were three bullet holes in the seat but the baby had somehow avoided injury. “What happened was a miracle,” he said.
The wounded children, among whom was a nine-month-old baby boy who had been shot in the chest, were initially treated at a local hospital before they were transferred by helicopter to a hospital in Arizona. The baby was said to be in a serious condition while 8-year-old Cody Langford required surgery on his wounded jaw.
After the children were found, a search was launched for Mckenzie Langford. Soldiers and men from La Mora searched in the dark for two hours until she was found at 9:30pm, Miller said.
“She walked for five hours,” said Lenzo Widmar, a cousin of Rhonita Miller.
“When we found her she was barefoot, she had blisters, a wound on her arm and was dehydrated. When she realized that it was us, the first thing she said was, ‘We have to go back for the others,” he said.
“She was in shock and we even had to fight with her a little to convince her that we already had the others. She wanted to return to the place where she left the wounded,” Widmar added.
“We want the culprits [to be caught], we want to know who they were, we want justice . . . We don’t want to live with this uncertainty. We’re a family of more than 5,000 members in our communities and our roots are very deep here in Mexico. We’re not thinking about leaving [but] we don’t want to be targets of organized crime,” he said.
Julian LeBarón, who has been outspoken in his condemnation of organized crime, told Milenio that “something very evil” happened on Monday, adding: “We’re unable to explain how armed men could kill women and children with so much cruelty.”
He said that Christina Langford shouted, “we’re women!” to the attackers before she was shot at close range.
LeBarón said he received a call early Tuesday morning from Security Secretary Durazo who informed him that three suspects had been arrested.
The LeBarón community in Galeana, Chihuahua.
Still, he said that he was willing to accept assistance from the United States to investigate the attack and combat Mexico’s notorious drug cartels.
President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Tuesday that the United States “stands ready, willing and able” to help Mexico defeat the cartel “monsters.”
“. . . The cartels have become so large and powerful that you sometimes need an army to defeat an army!” he wrote.
“This is the time for Mexico, with the help of the United States, to wage WAR on the drug cartels and wipe them off the face of the Earth. We merely await a call from your great new president!”
President López Obrador ruled out the possibility that Mexico would accept assistance from the United States but Julian LeBarón said that “if Donald Trump offers to help us uncover the truth, to find the culprits and bring them to justice, or if aliens come from Jupiter to offer us that clarity, we’ll accept it.”
Lenzo Widmar took a different view, stating “I want to think that Mexico can solve its own problems, I want to think that we don’t need a foreign government.”
The shooting took place near Rancho la Mora in Bavispe.
State and federal security forces have bolstered their presence in the area where the attack occurred and Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard attended the scene of the crime on Tuesday.
Although the attack appears to have been directly targeted at the Mormon community, Adrián LeBarón said they won’t abandon their homes.
“Nobody is running away from here. If they think that because of what they did we’re going to run away, they’re wrong.”
A banner in Coyoacán warned residents in July about drones being used by thieves.
Thieves in Mexico City are known to have been using drones for more than a year to case homes they plan to burglarize.
Now, National Action Party (PAN) Deputy Héctor Barrera has proposed that the city take regulatory action to combat the illicit use of the aviation technology.
“We have seen various cases among the inhabitants of Mexico City where these aerial devices are used to initially obtain images of the interiors of houses, which are later robbed,” he said.
A member of the capital’s Citizen Security Commission, Barrera said residents have told him that day and night home burglaries have flared up in recent weeks, and that they have seen drones used to case potential targets.
He believes that technology has enabled crime to exceed the police’s ability to combat it.
“. . . They carry out attacks and gather valuable information to commit their crimes, as technology at the service of crime gives them the opportunity to have that information, which puts preventative authorities at a disadvantage in their ability to respond,” he said.
“[Drones] are easy to access, obtain and use, as they can get hundreds of images in a matter of minutes [and from] distances of 500-600 meters from where they are operating them.”
Barrera presented an initiative to modify the local penal code to criminalize the use of drones in order to commit crimes, as well as other improper uses, such as spying and violation of privacy.
A Mexico City lawmaker has proposed a bill that would impose a fine of up to 16,898 pesos (US $880) for discarding used chewing gum in the street.
Green Party Deputy and Environmental Commission chairwoman Teresa Ramos Arreola said that removing one piece of gum costs “approximately 2.5 pesos [and] in the historic center alone we have counted up to 200,000 pieces of gum stuck to the pavement.”
The famous downtown pedestrian street Francisco I. Madero — only six blocks long — was found to have as many as 150,000 pieces of gum adhered to the roadway. Other downtown areas were found to have 75 pieces per square meter.
The Mexico City government has looked for ways to rid the city streets of gum since 2009. It is removed manually with gasoline and a spatula, or with high-tech machinery bought from Europe.
However, the problem goes beyond aesthetics and pollution. The bill also aims to address public health risks posed by tossing chewed gum onto the street.
Workers remove used gum from a city street.
Ramos’ proposal says every piece of gum thrown away in public spaces “is a big source of infection and a risk to the health of the city’s inhabitants, since it can harbor up to 10,000 bacteria and fungi gathered from the environment in which it’s found.”
“In this sense, each piece of gum is a source of infection, since it contains the microorganisms of the person who chewed it. Such is the case of a person with tuberculosis, salmonella or staphylococcus who, upon discarding the gum on the street, causes those bacteria to be scattered in the air. It will also gather dust, dirt and filth from the city.”
Data from Kraft Foods and the National Statistics Institute (INEGI) reveal that Mexico is the world’s second largest consumer of chewing gum after the United States. The market value for the over 92,000 tons of gum produced in the country each year is over US $420 million.
Ramos said the per-capita consumption of chewing gum in Mexico is 1.8 kilograms per year, meaning the average Mexican citizen chews 2.5 pieces a day.
Modern chewing gum has its roots in an 1860 meeting between former Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna and American inventor Thomas Adams. Santa Anna proposed that Adams use chicle as a substitute for rubber. Adams sweetened the latex instead and sold it in strips for chewing.
The Spanish word chicle comes from the Náhuatl word tzictli and the Mayan word sicté, which refer to the sap of the sapodilla tree, or chicozapote, as it’s called in Mexico. The latex derived from the tree’s bark is heated to remove the liquid and achieve the chewy consistency.
However, the majority of chewing gum on the market today is a synthetic substance called polyvinyl acetate, a polymer made by companies such as the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.
