September in Mexico
Great stuff from the editors of Mexico Insights: Living at Lake Chapala. They don't have to convince me that Jalisco is a great retirement destination.
According to their publication, Guadalajara now has between 6 and 8 million people. Wow, that would really be amazing. When I was there in 1988, statistics generally showed between 2.5 and 5 million people in the metropolitan area. Six to eight million would mean tremendous growth. Having done several population studies with Rigoberto Soria of the U de G while I was down there, I sort of doubt these high-end numbers. This teamNAFTA site has some more realistic numbers. There are some great stats on this page. For example, Jalisco, with its strong maquiladora industry, generated over $12 billion in foreign trade in 1999.
Corruption, corruption
Another case of corruption is revealed in Guadalajara. When I was at the UdeG, each student was assigned a mentor and their career would be intertwined with the mentor for years. Such were the politics during the days of PRI power. Salinas de Gortari was president and he's been in exile ever since. This time, it appears to be the inspectors who are taking bribes, but according to one principal involved in the scandal, "When the heads go astray, the body follows," alleging that corruption reaches into pretty high places. This was published in Milenio. Looks like a good publication that I'll check up on now and again.
Que pasa con los Parques?
Margarita Anaya from the UdeG (University of Guadalajara - where I went to school for a year) just did a study on 15 of the metro area's best city parks. They're losing visitors as people spend more of their weekend at the malls (Guadalajara has some of the best of these such as the Plaza del Sol or the Plaza Patria). They also have some wonderful city parks like Alcalde and Morelos. It seems that funding is not able to maintain the parks adequately. When I was there, entrance to a wonderful park like Alcalde that had a lake with boats, an amusement park, beautiful fountains, etc. was less than a nickel.
