Lausanne World Pulse – The Challenges of Mexico City
By Elisabeth Isais
The Layout of Mexico City
It has always impressed me that Mexico City is one of the only major cities in the world which was not built beside a lake, an ocean or a large river. When it was founded several hundred years ago, Mexico City was on a shallow lake bed, but that water has been drained off and one of the city’s biggest problems today is insufficient liquid. There seems little hope of improving the quality of the water, but if there were simply enough water for all the people in Mexico City, we would be thrilled. Praise God that the tropical mountain climate does include a wonderful rainy season, which helps.
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Another advantage of being beside a large body of water would have been more possibilities to transport goods, food and raw material which could be transformed into manufactured products in the thousands of factories in Mexico City. Instead, trucks are used to transport almost everything, leading to more pollution, increased traffic and loud motors. The train system is nearly dead and the immense international airport handles mostly people, with only a relatively small amount devoted to carrying cargo.
Life in Mexico City
In spite of marvelous natural resources in the country as a whole, poverty in rural areas has become so bad that millions of Mexicans have abandoned their fields and tried to find work and opportunities in Mexico City. This migration has not solved the problem; at least ten million Mexicans have given up and risked their lives trying to enter the United States illegally in hopes of finding decent-paying jobs. In turn they have shown an incredible love of family, sending money back to their home towns in quantities equal to what Mexico’s entire petroleum industry produces annually.
The overall population in the metropolitan area of Mexico City is about twenty-four million people; this includes some of the poorest of the poor (perhaps fifty percent of the population of the city), as well as prosperous middle class professionals. Traffic here is slow and dense; non air-conditioned subways are crowded to capacity most of the time and thousands of people spend as many as four hours a day going to and from their jobs, thankful to have even a small paycheck. On the political scene, after seventy-one years of having a one-party government, the region has begun to awaken to new opportunities for democracy.
Despite this, Mexico’s principal problem is corruption, which can be found in many levels of government and society. Businessmen and women and industrial leaders spend huge amounts of their income on protection and security. The government complains that few people pay their taxes. The country has the world’s highest rate of kidnapping (topping even Colombia). Much of the crime is not even reported because it seems so few criminals are ever caught and punished. Usually a bribe can get people out of anything.
| Elisabeth Fletcher Isais has been working with Latin America Mission since 1951. She has been working in Mexico since 1964. She is the editor and author of various Spanish publications. |