There’s a lot more driving Mexico City’s gentrification than bad gringos
by David Agren.
The acerbic signs and graffiti criticizing gentrification in Mexico City’s fashionable neighbourhoods were certain to capture international attention.
“Spanish is spoken here,” “Mexico for Mexicans,” and, “Go home,” read three of the screeds.
Social media couldn’t get enough of the disorderly protests – with the familiar masked vandals infiltrating yet another march and smashing up storefronts. The Mexico City police were curiously absent. An easy narrative of Americans abroad wearing out their welcome, while ICE cruelly rounded up Mexican migrants in cities such as Los Angeles.
The Department of Homeland Security jumped in with its own snark, posting, “Oh,” above an X Post with protester graffitiing the words, “Not your home,” and a protester waving a sign in English admonishing, “Pay taxes, learn Spanish, respect my culture.
Much of the international media, meanwhile, focused on the core matter of gentrification, which has spread through leafy neighbourhoods such as Roma, Condesa and Juárez – among others – over the past 15 years, driving up rents and forcing some long-term residents to move as their homes became short-term rentals.
The easy hook for any story on gentrification are…
Amid international fallout, a local tragedy
by Madeleine Wattenbarger.
Until last week, Ximena Guzmán Cuevas and José Muñoz were not public figures. Longstanding members of the ruling Morena Party, they both held senior positions in Mexico City’s government. Guzmán worked as Mayor Clara Brugada’s personal secretary; Muñoz as an adviser, coordinating closely with the national government, including on security issues. On Tuesday, May 20, a little after 7 a.m., Guzmán pulled over on a busy stretch of Tlalpan Avenue to pick up her coworker. A gunman fired twelve shots into the car, killing both Ximena and Pepe.
The assassination was timed for maximum visibility: up the road, in the National Palace and in view of the press, Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch informed President Sheinbaum of the events. She announced the news live to the nation.
A week later, information is scarce and the suspects remain at large. At a press conference the day after the murders, Mexico City’s top prosecutor, Bertha Alcalde Luján, and Public Security Secretary Pablo Vázquez Camacho refrained from answering questions about possible motives. The location, timing, and calculated execution suggest a professional hit: the assassins worked in a trio, used gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, and escaped in a stolen car into the eastern fringes of Mexico State.
How Mexico disappears the missing
by Emiliano Polo.
Mother’s Day in Mexico has increasingly become a day of protest for women whose children have disappeared in the context of a deepening national crisis. This year, demonstrations in cities such as Mexico City and Guadalajara on May 10 demanded both recognition for the search efforts undertaken by families and guarantees for their safety, particularly in light of the growing number of searchers who have been murdered. These protests stressed a disturbing pattern: those who step in to do the work the state has failed to carry out are now being targeted themselves. In reclaiming public space and visibility, these women not only confront institutional abandonment but also redefine courage as a form of political resistance towards a government that promotes impunity to hide its incapacity.
Behind the more visible violence of organized crime and drug trafficking in Mexico lies a more profound, less acknowledged crisis. While homicides and cartel-related violence dominate headlines, the fate of over 125,287 missing persons—according to the Ministry of the Interior’s registry—remains unknown. The impunity around the tragedy results from both deliberate government action and inaction.
The Mexican government has thoroughly undermined its own capacity to respond to this crisis by slashing budgets, weakening judicial and investigative institutions, and manipulating official databases to obscure the exact scale of the missing persons crisis. The Office of the Attorney General, for example, has ignored its legal responsibilities, particularly in identifying the thousands of bodies buried in clandestine graves and in establishing a comprehensive National Program of Exhumations.
Claudia Sheinbaum’s terrible, no good, very bad week
by David Agren.
Claudia Sheinbaum has suffered perhaps the worst week of her administration – marked by the murders of two senior functionaries in the Mexico City government.
How bad was her week?
Over the weekend, the Cuauhtemoc, a Mexican Navy ship, crashed into the Brooklyn Bridge while on a global goodwill tour. The crash, which New York City officials say was caused by a mechanical failure, resulted in the deaths of Naval cadets, América Yamilet Sánchez, 20, and Adal Jair Maldonado, 23.
On Tuesday, Ximena Guzmán, personal secretary to mayor Clara Brugada, and José Muñoz, a government advisor, were killed in cold blood as they commuted on a busy thoroughfare. The suspect remains at large and no motive has been offered for the assassinations.
The day before in Guanajuato state, seven young people were killed when gunmen arriving in SUVs shot up a parish festival in the town of San Bartolo de los Berrios.
