Destination unknown
As Mexico City residents slowly returned to work and normal life after the holidays, we discovered we had a garbage problem. Not just the bags of empty liquor bottles by the door; a real problem for the whole city and surrounding State of Mexico. The largest solid waste disposal facility used for city garbage was shut down in December, and suddenly the city’s sanitation department wasn’t sure what to do with the garbage.
The dump in question, called Bordo Poniente, was closed with great fanfare on December 19, 2011 after over 25 years of service. In line with Mayor Marcelo Ebrard’s ongoing effort to implement ecologically friendly public policies, city agencies developed a plan to recycle the site’s estimated 70 million tons of garbage in a number of ways. According to the plan, the city will issue a tender for private companies to compete for a contract under which the winner will partner with government agencies to build a plant to harvest biogas from the decomposing organic waste. Read the rest of this entry »
Some developments meriting commentary took place last week in the preliminary campaigns for next year’s Mexican presidential election. We laid out the general pre-candidacy landscape in 
With less than a year remaining before Mexico’s next presidential election, to be held July 1, 2012, not much is settled other than the front-runnership of the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto. But the political parties have not yet launched their official campaigns, and there is still plenty of time for the landscape to shift. So from this vantage point, here is our view of the lay of the land.
