Jalisco school teaches sustainability

I recent visited the ACA center near Jocotepec, where two Canadians and a Mexican assistant teach local farmers organic farming techniques. They also sell the best mixed greens on either side of the border for just 20 pesos a bag at an on-site market called GG's. Check out the article I wrote on the center from the Oct. 14 edition of The Herald Mexico.

AMLO in tough at home

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has seemingly dropped out of sight since being declared the "legitimate president of Mexico" on Sept. 16 while his election opponent - and the official winner of the race - Felipe Calderon basks in the media spotlight.

This Sunday's Tabasco gubernatorial election could change that - should the PRD win - or hasten Lopez Obrador's descent into obscurity and irrelevence. Polls and analysts are suggesting the latter should happen, although the race is close. A telling Grupo Reforma poll last week said most PRI voters would back their party's gubernatorial candidate, who also would receive enough support from dissatisfied Lopez Obrador voters to possibly pull out the win. As for the PAN, the party claimed a paltry three percent of votes on July 2 and shouldn't be a factor.

But even if the PRD pulls out a win in Tabasco, Lopez Obrador gains little. As in Chiapas - a state the PRD barely won recently - some of the PRD leadership recognizes Felipe Calderon as President-elect. This, more than any tactical blunders after July 2 on Lopez Obrador's part, sabotages his bid to lead an alternate government, or more accurately, an effective protest movement. The PRD is more than Lopez Obrador, whose aspirations and behavior are damaging the party more than any PAN attack ad ever could.

UPDATE:

Thirteen PRD supporters were arrested for supposedly planning to sabotage Sunday's election. The PRI currently governs the oil-rich state, which has a long and calamitous history of holding not-so-fair elections, so detaining perredistas on the eve of the vote obviously looks suspicious. Sadly for the PRD, though, the party now has a reputation of not abiding by election results and being democratic only when it suits it best. Thus, when it cries foul - and perhaps quite justly in this situation - the public will imply ignore them.

What's with high tomato prices?

Photo by Steven H. Miller, taken in Tepatitlan de Morelos, Jalisco

A kilogram of tomatoes at my local Gigante supermarket in Guadalajara now sells for 40 pesos. I took a pass.

The price of the normally-cheap Mexican dietary staple jumped recently due to hurricane Lane, which last month battered Sinaloa, a major tomato-producing state. (Sinaloa adorns its license plates with a tomato and the Culiacan baseball team is called the Tomateros, or tomato growers).

And as an unexpected consequence of the high price, Mexico's inflation rate also soared, passing the four-percent plateau. Low inflation - it dipped below three percent for the first time ever during the winter - had been one of the Fox administrations biggest accomplishments, but that could now be jeopardized.

Tomatoes comprise a major part of Mexico's consumer price index. And according to a Los Angeles Times article, "[N]o dietary staple can gyrate a nation's consumer price index like Mexico's tomatoes."

The index's spike won't resolve itself until after several more harvests. In the meantime, expect to see fewer tomato-based dishes and fresh salsas on the nation's menus.

Soy Rebelde!

The show ceased production and exited the Televisa airwaves earlier this spring, but Rebelde, the popular and over-the-top teen telenovela lives on in other markets and the show's spinoff band, RBD, which is presently recording an English-language album, keeps churning out one sappy track after another. (Actually, the group made headlines this weekend when one of the male members, Christian, insisted he wasn't gay and a female member, Anahi, said she wasn't anorexic.)

I mention all this because traffic to a posting about Rebelde on my blog exploded recently and most of the hits are coming from South America - most notably Brazil and Peru - along with Romania. Many visitors have left comments in Portugese.

My only brush with Rebelde, other than hearing RBD songs on the radio, came from writing an article for a Calgary alt. weekly - and posting it to my blog - about how the Canadian Tourism Commission and Travel Alberta teamed up to bring the show to the Canadian Rockies for a week of episodes last year. Based on the show's demographics - lot of fresa kids watched it - and the positive feelings towards Canada held by many young Mexicans, the deal apparently made sense.

Here's what I wrote ... it's amusing, which is about the best way to describe Rebelde - the uniforms, characters, social dynamics, curious storylines, etc. - and RBD.

Chivas for sale?

The saga of Jorge Vergara, the multi-level marketing kingpin-turned movie producer and soccer club owner, churned out an endless stream of stories last week, ranging from the possible of sale of Club Deportiva Guadalajara to a massive unpaid water bill.

Vergara bought Chivas, a wildly-popular, but badly-underperforming team, from a group of shareholders back in 2002. Not all the shareholders sold out, and now one is going after Vergara in a lawsuit, which could alter the club's ownership structure. Vergara took out full-page ads recently to state that Chivas is not for sale.

The team's training facility and athletic club in Guadalajara's Providencia neighborhood apparently is though. But in order to sell it, Vergara must deal with a five-million-peso water bill issued by SIAPA, Guadalajara's water utility.

Also going unfulfilled, Chivas' grandiose new stadium in suburban Zapopan. So far, not much has been accomplished, even though Vergara pledged back in 2002 to have the stadium completed by 2006, Chivas' 100th anniversary. The team is still selling private boxes, although according to Mural, if the stadium is not completed by the end of 2007, the money must be returned along with 25-percent interest. Another story said permits obtained from the municipality of Zapopan have lapsed.

Vergara's presence always seems to loom larger than his team - and Omnilife, his supplements empire. (The company expanded into Russia last year and just last month opened a massive new facility in suburban Guadalajara.) This saga should drag out for a while longer.

When media members become the news

My good buddy Sean Mattson, the San Antonio Express-News' correspondent in Monterrey, describes the joy having his photo published in a local paper and how one reporter, who identified Sean as "Shan Kan," viewed the only foreigner in attendance at a press conference with the governor of Nuevo Leon as a possible security problem.

PRI legislators to play ball

After six years of intransigence and a humbling by the Mexican electorate, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) finally agreed to play ball with a National Action Party (PAN) president. The PRI, which governed Mexico for 71 years, responded positively to the prospect of passing parts of president-elect Felipe Calderon's agenda.

PRI stonewalling during President Vicenete Fox's administration parked Mexico in a sort of political purgatory. Fox, being a somewhat weak politician, couldn't play hardball and the PRI, led by Roberto Madrazo, expected stalling would pay dividends and eventually return the presidency to the PRI. The PRI antics hurt Fox, but ultimately failed - the party didn't capture a single state in the presidential race and is now the third-place force in both congress and the senate. (Madrazo, of course, shoulders much of the blame for the PRI's demise.)

Calderon, an often-underestimated man, will no doubt capitalize on the PRI's weakened state - and possibly marginalize the left-leaning Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and its allies. (He's already usurping parts of the PRD's platform.) The public's appetite for progress should also force the PRI hand.

The PRI lacks a strong ideology, meaning it will shift where needed - even if it's toward's Calderon. Survival will be its inner guide. If the party behaves as before, it could accelerate its descent into irrelevance.