Mexico City's New Mayor On the Go: Beaches, Bikes and Wi-Fi
 Edward M. Gomez - SFGate.com
| | Mexico City's imaginative new mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, sees the capital as a "city on the go," a slogan he has adopted. (Mexico City Government Web site) |
In land-locked, high-altitude, mountain-surrounded Mexico City, one of the world's largest and most congested metropolises, it's time to hit the beaches - right at home.
This week, the capital's new mayor, the left-leaning, progressive technocrat Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, officiated at the openings of two inner-city, artificial playas (beaches), complete with broad expanses of sand (trucked in from coastal Veracruz), palm-thatched canopies, above-ground pools, go-cart tracks and other summer-fun diversions.
Inspired by the successful Paris Plage program that the government of the French capital has sponsored in recent years along a stretch of the banks of the Seine, offering Parisians who do not leave the city a beach-like alternative close to home, Ebrard's aim was to provide chilangos (Mexico City residents) who may not be able to afford a vacation in Acapulco, Puerto Vallarta or one of Mexico's other renowned resorts an economical opportunity to chill out in their own back yard. (In Europe, other cities that in recent years have set up such temporary "beaches" during the hot, sunny months of the year include Rome, Berlin, Prague and Budapest.
Imaginative, unpredictable and, as a politician, fiercely independent, the 47-year-old Ebrard is a member of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), whose national candidate, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did not officially win last year's controversial presidential election but who did, subsequently, declare himself Mexico's "legitimate president."
Ebrard, who is interested in public transportation and in fighting pollution, wants to further develop the capital's bus services and bicycle lanes. He has ordered his government's senior-level officials to ride their bikes to work once a month. (Milenio) This week, he announced a deal with ZTE, China's largest telecommunications-supply company, to develop the capital as an Internet-service wireless zone.
To date, Ebrard has not recognized the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of the center-right National Action Party (PAN), which is largely pro-Washington and is viewed by many Mexicans as a dutiful servant of the corporate oligarchy that effectively controls most policy-making at various levels of government. The PAN does not control the government of Mexico City, however, which is dominated by Ebrard's PRD. (Technically, Ebrard is the governor, not the mayor, of Mexico City, since the capital is a federal district, like Washington, D.C., in the U.S. or the Australian Capital Territory, in which Canberra is located.)
Although it's still early spring in Mexico City, the weather has been sunny and warm for several weeks, and summer temperatures, when the season officially arrives, are expected to be high. The capital will have four temporary beaches up and running by then. The first two have been set up at existing, community sports centers. Outside the new, artificial beaches, one Mexico City daily reported, it's just "the city, with its asphalt...the subway, buses, markets and police patrols; inside [the beach zones], it's toboganning, a sandpit for beach-volleyball, swimming pools, marimbas and sun lovers..."
Ebrard's government has reportedly spent around $912,000 on the new program. Ebrard told reporters: "We're going to create spaces where people can entertain themselves, even though there are some who are bothered by what we're doing...." Those critics, he noted, "are able to go to other beaches, but this has been done for the majority [of Mexico City residents]; it's free, and we're going to keep them open...all summer long...."
PAN politician María de la Paz Quiñónez has called for Mexico's national environmental-protection agency to investigate the quality of the sand that has been trucked into the capital city for the artificial beaches. De la Paz Quiñónez has suggested that the sand could offer breeding grounds for "certain types of worms" and infections that could pose public-health problems.
Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME, has lived and worked in the U.S. and overseas, and speaks several languages. He has written for The New York Times, the Japan Times and the International Herald Tribune. |
Vallarta Weddings
News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2007 
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