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 News Around the Republic of Mexico | December 2006 
Calderon to Help 100 Poorest Towns
 Ioan Grillo - Associated Press
| | Mexican President Felipe Calderon, left, speaks during the announcement of his 2007 budget in the Los Pinos presidential residence in Mexico City on Tuesday Dec. 5, 2006. At right is Mexico's Treasury Secretary, Agustin Carstens. (AP/Dario Lopez-Mills) |
Newly inaugurated President Felipe Calderon announced a program this week to help Mexico's 100 poorest communities, responding to leftist critics who accuse the conservative leader of wanting to help only the rich.
Traveling by helicopter to Tlacoachistlahuaca, a desperately poor, largely Indian community a few miles from the Pacific resort of Acapulco, Calderon promised to pave and light the town's streets and build a proper drainage system. He also pledged to build or improve about 2,500 houses at a cost of about $4 million.
"Beyond the colors of political parties there is only one Mexico, a Mexico drowned in poverty and marginalization, and a Mexico that wants politicians to get to work," Calderon told families in the town's square.
Calderon said his anti-poverty program will draw money from several federal agencies and will be repeated in 100 deeply poor towns where people suffer from malnutrition and disease and lack properly maintained roads and clean water.
About 50 million Mexicans — nearly half the population — live in poverty, a factor that drives millions north to look for work in the United States.
Calderon said that Tlacoachistlahuaca, a town of 15,000, has an infant mortality rate of 80 for every 1,000 live births, four times the level of Mexico City and 16 times that of the U.S. According to official statistics, three-quarters of its adults were illiterate in 1990.
Calderon's leftist rival Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whom he narrowly defeated in the presidential election, had promised handouts and inexpensive goods to aid the poor, portraying Calderon as a puppet of Mexico's rich business elite.
Lopez Obrador claims Calderon conspired with outgoing president Vicente Fox to rig the July election and he has refused to accept the official outcome, declaring himself Mexico's "legitimate" president in a ceremony last month.
But the leftist governor of Guerrero state, who is from Lopez Obrador's party, attended Calderon's ceremony Wednesday, a sign that partisan solidarity with Lopez Obrador may be trumped by the need to cooperate with aid-bearing federal officials.
Calderon urged Mexicans to bury their differences over the election and focus on the nation's problems.
"When the differences only translate to fights, nobody wins. Fights between politicians only hurt people, especially the poor," he said. |
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