| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | November 2009 
On the Mayor's Agenda: 'Civilize' Mexico City
 Chris Hawley & Sergio Solache - USA Today
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November 23, 2009
| THE EBRARD FILE
Full name: Marcelo Luis Ebrard Casaubon
Age: 50; born Oct. 10, 1959 in Mexico City.
Education: Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City; Ecole Nationale d'Administration (National School of Administration), Paris
Politics: Liberal
Party: Democratic Revolutionary Party
Career: Budget manager, foreign relations director, chief of staff, public safety director, police commissioner, social development secretary for government of Mexico City. Served one term as a congressman from 1997 to 2000 for the now-defunct Party of the Democratic Center.
Sources: Mexico City government and USA TODAY research (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) | |
Mexico City — The world's second-largest city has a lot of problems: kidnappings for ransom, drug-related murders, severe poverty. But if there's one thing that really sets off Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, it's chewing gum.
He's serious.
"When you throw your gum on the ground, you're saying, 'I don't care about my quality of life,' " Ebrard says. "The idea … is to change our civic culture."
Since taking office three years ago, the liberal, Paris-educated mayor has initiated broad quality-of-life measures more fitting for a genteel European city than rough-and-tumble Mexico.
He is also working to tackle some of the city's major problems — crime and water shortages — but his quest for civility garners the headlines.
He has banned smoking in bars and restaurants, evicted thousands of vendors from public streets, outlawed plastic bags, closed huge swaths of roads so joggers and cyclists can use them on weekends and restricted out-of-state cars from entering the city from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. to cut down on pollution.
In addition, new traffic laws bar talking on cellphones while driving or letting children under 12 ride in the front.
A publicity campaign called the "Ten Commandments of Urban Conduct" urges citizens not to whistle at women or throw gum on the ground.
It's a remarkable comeback for Ebrard, whose government career nearly ended in disgrace in 2004.
Though everything has not gone smoothly, Ebrard's efforts to make the capital more livable have attracted international accolades and pushed him to the top of his party's list of possible 2012 presidential candidates.
World leaders such as France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva drop by City Hall to see him.
"The rich like him, and so do the poor," says José Fernández Santillán, a political science professor at the Monterrey Institute for Technological and Advanced Studies. "He's trying to project this image of revitalizing the city and Mexico."
In a September poll by the Reforma newspaper, respondents gave Ebrard a grade of 6.1 out of 10.
Are 'boutique policies' enough?
Despite some grumbling, especially by displaced vendors, people actually are abiding by Ebrard's rules. The city's bars are clear of smoke. Supermarkets are switching to biodegradable bags. And people can stroll on downtown streets once nearly impassable.
Harvard University gave Ebrard an award this month for replacing hundreds of privately owned "microbuses," notorious for their belching exhaust, with clean, quiet buses.
"They're small things, but they're important so you can enjoy life," office worker Nadia Rangel, 32, says as she eats ice cream in a plaza where the mayor recently evicted dozens of street vendors who had clogged the walkways.
Some critics, however, say the mayor needs to do more to fight crime, create jobs and fix the city's water shortages and power outages. Curbing smoking and plastic bags are "boutique policies" meant to generate news, says Federico Estévez, a political science professor at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. "On things like jobs and crime and the economy, he's not done so well."
Carlos Alberto Flores, a rival city councilman, says Ebrard "clears the street vendors out of the tourist areas, but he doesn't attack the real problem, which is the lack of good jobs that forces them to be street vendors."
Ebrard says he's also working on the city's long-standing problems. To fight crime, his administration is installing 11,000 security cameras on streets and in the subway. Cameras are now mounted on police tow trucks to discourage traffic police from taking bribes, and 800 handheld computers were distributed to officers to aid investigations.
The city has also built three new water-treatment plants, overhauled four existing plants and replaced about 300 miles of leaky pipes, he says.
Facing crises, from mobs to flu
Ebrard, 50, has held a string of city jobs since 1985 and was a member of Mexico's lower house of Congress from 1997 to 2000.
In 2002, he rejoined the city government as police commissioner, as kidnappings for ransom were beginning to be a problem in the city.
In November 2004, a mob mistook three plainclothes federal policemen for kidnappers during a drug stakeout at an elementary school. As TV helicopters transmitted the scene live, the mob doused two officers with gasoline, and burned them to death. Angry that city police failed to send help in time, then-president Vicente Fox fired Ebrard.
Ebrard's career, however, was rescued when then-mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador named him the city's secretary of social development and then backed his 2006 campaign for mayor.
As mayor, Ebrard is the top elected official over the heart of Mexico City, called Mexico's Federal District, which has a population of 8.7 million — larger than New York City's 8.4 million and behind Tokyo. Ebrard, by law, is limited to one six-year term, which ends in 2012.
In April, the mayor drew international attention when the H1N1 flu virus surfaced in Mexico City and quickly spread into a world pandemic. Ebrard shut down schools, businesses and government offices, helping to slow the spread.
"He handled the flu outbreak very well," says Hector Zamitiz, a political science professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "The entire world was watching."
Some residents are less than thrilled with the mayor's efforts.
Maximiliano Díaz, 45, had been selling handmade flutes and drums for 22 years from a booth in Coyoacán plaza. His sales have fallen by 80% since August, when the city forced him to move to a market built for vendors that is hard to find, Díaz says. "There's this fever to civilize Mexico, but in the process we're losing our rights to our public spaces," Díaz says. "I understand the mayor wants to modernize us, but he's taking away a bit of our culture."
Hawley and Solache are Latin America correspondents for USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic
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