Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Totally Back in Mexico Now
We are working for 4 days in an area of Mexico City called Santa Fe. It is super modern. Most of the buildings have major company names on them, GE, Hewlett Packard, Quaker State, Ericsson, etc etc. What country am I in? Oh yeah, there is the Jose Cuervo building as well. One of the very liberal locals here is annoyed by this part of town. It used to be a very very very poor neighborhood with a huge landfill. Then a former president bought all the land and developed the crap out of it. Money money money. It doesn't feel like the other Mexico city we've been in. (But I gotta say, I really appreciate the clean modern bathrooms with plenty of toilet paper, the free internet and the comfortable hotel conference room to hang out in at our location.)
Here are photos, circles seem to be a theme:
The building on the far left, Hotel Vesta, is where I'm working this week.
Jose Cuervo building with WILD hotel in background.
Closer on that wacky hotel up there.
POURING rain when I went on my walk to take these photos.
And then, five minutes down the road is this neighborhood. Stark contrast anyone?
Driving home today (early! Yay!) the clouds were very dramatic:
As was the traffic:
The main reason traffic is really sucky these days (aside from the fact that there are 22 million people living here) is because the main road in town, Paseo de la Reforma, is closed off by protestors of the election results. Have you been following the Mexican election? It was July 2 and has not been settled yet. The simplest way to explain it is -- Cast your mind to the 2000 election in the US: Gore V. Bush. Remember Florida? Supreme Court? Etc? The results were the same here and the Gore in this case, Lopez Obrador, is demanding a full recount as there were problems all over. The Bush in this case, Felipe Calderon, says he won. There have been huge demonstrations in downtown MC and now this ongoing closing of Reforma. Today I saw these posters:
They are put out by PAN -- Calderon's (the Bush in this scenario) party. I found it amusing.
I'm back in La Ciudad.
Here are photos, circles seem to be a theme:
The building on the far left, Hotel Vesta, is where I'm working this week.
Jose Cuervo building with WILD hotel in background.
Closer on that wacky hotel up there.
POURING rain when I went on my walk to take these photos.
And then, five minutes down the road is this neighborhood. Stark contrast anyone?
Driving home today (early! Yay!) the clouds were very dramatic:
As was the traffic:
The main reason traffic is really sucky these days (aside from the fact that there are 22 million people living here) is because the main road in town, Paseo de la Reforma, is closed off by protestors of the election results. Have you been following the Mexican election? It was July 2 and has not been settled yet. The simplest way to explain it is -- Cast your mind to the 2000 election in the US: Gore V. Bush. Remember Florida? Supreme Court? Etc? The results were the same here and the Gore in this case, Lopez Obrador, is demanding a full recount as there were problems all over. The Bush in this case, Felipe Calderon, says he won. There have been huge demonstrations in downtown MC and now this ongoing closing of Reforma. Today I saw these posters:
They are put out by PAN -- Calderon's (the Bush in this scenario) party. I found it amusing.
I'm back in La Ciudad.
Permalink posted by Julia @ 8/08/2006 06:31:00 PM 
