Thanks for writing about this. I saw the headlines and wondered how much of a story it was. Getting priced out of your neighborhood crosses culture. When I lived in Colorado the complaint was that Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs had been priced out of reach for the “natives”. The most popular tshirt for awhile read “If God wanted Texans to ski, he would have made bullshit white”. Great post.
I lived in Texas during the second Gulf War, that and “I’m here for Freedom Fries and not French Fries”, & “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey” were very popular . And funny.
You're speaking to the heart of what is so thorny about all of this. And like you, I find there are few crowd-pleasing solutions. Mexico is a magical place, so wild it feels like freedom from a firehose. It needs to stay that way.
The News! Lord, used to read that back in the day. Water-downed hot sauce, the temerity! Next thing you know there will be a demand for corn-free tamales and non alcoholic mezcal.
As a life long Gringo with many experience in Mexico I would like to share this tidbit. I was 10 years old on my first visit to Mexico with my family. We were of the Mormon faith at that time and we travelled West from New Orleans to visit the Mormon Temples in the West. In 1963 all the Mormon Temples were West of the Mississippi River. We found ourselves in Del Rio, Texas. My Father, being a High Priest, was allowed to hold Sacrament Meetings for the far flung Church members. We travelled across the one lane wooden bridge to Acuna where he held such a meeting. Only one way traffic allowed and you had to wait your turn. We were in a 1959 Plymouth I recall. I was smitten. Horses and mules pulling wagons and chickens on a bus. Been back many times for extended stays but that memory remains!
As an Italian-American visitor to México since 1972, I have seen many trends in D.F. and all around the country. Il miei amici Mèsicani have always been welcoming and accommodating. The people of México are warm and very traditional in their beliefs. It’s all about how you treat them. Learn the language. Going from Sicilian dialect to Calo in the cities and barrios is quite amazing. The people of this vast country have a very good grasp of European languages. I go to a Basque restaurant in Lomas de Polando, where I can converse in Spanish, Italian and Inglese. My southern dialect (Siciliano) is understood by many native Méxicanos. The Méxican-American dialect of Pachuco-Calo,@ or simply Calo, segweys amazingly well. The Méxican people are diverse. In Yucatán I’ve been able to pick up some Mayan dialect.This is a wonderful place for American expats too. San Luis Potosí is a conclave all in itself for artisans from El Norte. Give México a chance and you will be well rewarded. These are wonderful people who are very current in all the European-American trends.
Fascinating to hear that Tommy. Id love to hear more of the stories from Sicily as well and the U.S. connection. Let me delve into your posts. Best there friend!
Continua a imparare! La cosa interessante è che quando vieni in Italia, la maggior parte delle persone parla un ottimo inglese. Non avrai problemi a comunicare. Ciao!
"I think there should be measures against people priced out of their neighborhoods but I don’t know exactly what they are."
You have stated exactly what has been a huge problem for years in the United States. Property tax has been a real problem to the balance of existing residents and the influx of outsiders. In San Francisco, there was a neighborhood of working class Hispanics, mostly Mexican, called Castro Heights. Property was cheap and many of the homes were of historical design. I worked on a few of those. Gays, very wealthy gays, moved into the area, remodeling the homes with doing extensive landscaping. A huge supply of rental housing was gone and property tax skyrocketed. Original residents were economically being locked out of their own neighborhoods. There was violence against the gay homeowners and gay landlords and Mexicans in San Francisco were labelled as homophobic.
Besides the barbaric practice of essentially paying rent for a purchased home and just abolish property tax, economic freedom zones could be established where property taxes are frozen and depriving investors of economic incentives to rehab an area or neighborhood. Also there would be no economic consequences of remodeling your own property. You can also establish rules that any buying of a home you cannot sell the home for four years. This is called flipper laws that some towns have instituted to prevent the constant flipping of properties and the escalation of property tax. Former Republican Jack Kemp, the former quarterback in the AFL, from Buffalo, NY was a lone proponent in the Republican party of this type of social engineering to bring back economically the inner cities and older decaying neighborhoods suffering from the jack hammers of so-called economic progress.
Politicians at all levels in the United States also have been responsible to policies creating cultural divisions. When the second wave of Vietnam's boat people to the United States occurred, the United States starting paying landlords 40-50 percent more money then the local average rent fee charged, for landlords to house the Vietnamese boat people creating unbelievable resentment by existing renters who started being charged the new rental rate established by the United States government and state and local officials. Rent doubled in areas housing the Vietnamese in less then 6 months after arrival of the refugees. You can easily imagine what the consequences would become. This type of massive economic disturbance and now escalated cultural interference has been the policies of countries around the world with the easily predictable outcomes. The transformation of Stockholm, Sweden would be one of the most extreme examples and villages older then 700 years in Ireland.
Very interesting and I never knew that history of the Castro district. There was a classic Simpson episode when Fidel says "America is not so bad. They named a neighborhood after me..." Good to hear some concrete policies. The UK has become a total disaster on housing but then it has on many things.
There's so many dichotomous reactions in Mexico it's mind boggling. Angry at gringos for deporting Mexicans, yet also wanting gringos out of their nicer enclaves. Having an economy that is driven by exports to the USA, yet angry that US companies are buying up resources. Promoting leftist nationalism when one of the basic tenets of leftist ideology is the erosion of nationalism. As a result, Mexicans shouldnt be surprised that Americans are moving investments elsewhere in Latin America and Asia where they are more welcome.
I'd say you are really referring to the leading Mexican ideologies, not the Mexican people. And I agree - current political ideology in Mexico is very much self-damaging.
However, most Mexicans care more about the narco killer that is terrorizing their village with their shiny, new American-made gun in order to sell a bunch of fentanyl to some homeless guy in Cleveland that has lost everything because his society isn't capable of taking care of the people who fall through its cracks.
Even if most Americans are unaware of it, their country also has negative effects on its neighbors, and not only positive ones.
If Mexico hates American Influence, then it should stop having its economy totally dependent on gringo money. Stop taking remittances, stop working for companies whose sole customer is the USA, stop eating at McDonalds, stop shopping at Walmart, stop using American developed pharmaceuticals, etc. become another Cuba or Venezuela.
My first experiences in Mexico go back to 1964. I was among 700 Canadian University Students who were inspired by the calls for idealism and selflessness and who volunteered for a project that we called the CIASP (Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects- CEPIA in French). It was actually a Canadian Version of a US based project called Amigos Anonymous that was inspired by the call of John F. Kennedy to do good.
We Canadians had several "community development projects" in the rural parts of Hidalgo State, while the Americans (gringos) had projects across Mexico. We worked together and had a coordinating office in Mexico City that was underwritten by Catholic Missionary societies.
We spent some time in Mexico City in an orientation session that exposed us to Mexican History and social reality (tours of the paracaista communities etc). And all of us had experiences like your adventures with the torta.
When many of us first went to Mexico, we were ultra-naive in our idealism since manyactually believed that we were helping a "third world country" to modernize. It did not take long to dispel those misconceptions and we found our hosts were hard-working, intelligent and wonderfully generous people who taught us much more than we could ever teach them.
You may find it interesting to learn that we always reminded people that we were Canadian and not American. There were obvious signs of anti-gringoism and we did find it helpful to remind people of our Canadian roots.
But those Canadian roots were also grounded in a version of paternalism and superiority that overlooked the fundamental values and nature of Mexico. We eventually became aware that we were just a different version of colonialism when we came into close contact with Monsignor Ivan Illich and his CIDOC centre in Cuernavaca. We were inspired by his words and philosophy and reached out to him for advice. We invited him to come to speak to us in Canada, and also to a gathering of Canadian and American volunteers in Chicago. In 1967, in a famous speech called the Seamy Side of Charity, he told us to go home and never return to Mexico unless it was as tourists.
That speech has been widely disseminated online and I have a 58 year old reel-to-reel tape of that speech in Chicago. I have been desperately trying to digitize this old tape for years and hope to have it available soon. It's complicated by the shift in technology and the difficulty of finding old working machines.
This was such a great read, Ioan. Thank you so much for sharing this. I read your books "Gangster Warlords" and "Caudillos del Crimen" while I was incarcerated in the United States for drug-trafficking offenses (I'm out now and on the straight and narrow - education really goes a long way!) and I remember being so impressed by your investigations. It's so great to see that you're still doing what you do best. I look forward to reading more.
I'll be sure to, thank you! I did a lot of reading followed by a lot of writing during my 9-year stay, and I was talking to a literary agent about a project I was working on that dealt with illegal immigration, guns, and drugs in the U.S. This was right before COVID hit, and I'm sad to say I trashed my manuscripts during all the moving around from cell to cell that we were subjected to every time someone tested positive.
I'm still trying to get back to that project (fiction, non-fiction, a little bit of both? That's what I've yet to decide), but it's been tough with everything going on in my life since I got out 2 years ago. I've been rebuilding my life here in Mexico after 25 years of living in the U.S., giving Mexico City a try first, then Queretaro, and now I'm in my homestate of Guanajuato. Needless to say, I'm excited to have found your work once again and I believe it may be just what I need to get back to what I was working on before.
I want to share a bit of my story, in the hopes of leaving something positive in the world. I guess it's redemption I'm after, I'm not sure. I'll share a link below in reference to my charges and sentencing. I know it's a long shot, but maybe we could work on something in the future.
Good post. Mexico City generally has the most expensive housing costs in the country. Another factor, hotly debated in rising housing costs in the US, is the increasing role of large institutional investors like Blackstone. It can be hard to track, I wonder if there has been an increase in foreign institutional investments in CDMX real estate given price rises. One solution imo is making development easier but most left leaning protestors hate that one ha. From what I know, the left leaning Mexico City government is more restrictive for new developments than most other places in the country and I think could use a dose of YIMBYism as they call it. Cheers!
Blackrock has huge economic ties to Mexico. When Nieto was President he allowed the first private investment in PEMEX and Blackrock was the first investor. In seven months, Blackrock had secured over 1 billion dollars in PEMEX energy projects, many times as the only bidder. They also were involved in toll roads, hospitals, gas pipelines, prisons and the worst of all pensions. "By placing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension money into its Mexican infrastructure business, BlackRock puts Mexico's state and local governments in an impossible position, says Josh Rosner, an adviser to the BlackRock Transparency Project and co-author of the report. “If a BlackRock-owned infrastructure project becomes ‘a road to nowhere,' and the government wants to stop funding the project, BlackRock can put the official over a barrel and say, ‘You're putting a loss on pensioners,'” Rosner says. “This would force the public official to choose between a waste of public monies and the risk that they would suffer a political loss of voters.” Such an arrangement virtually guarantees conflicts of interest, and possible corruption, in these projects.
"Blackstone Group has raised $695 million (523.62 million pounds) from Mexican pension funds for its first two local private equity funds, filings showed, joining Black Rock and KKR & Co in expanding in Mexico following regulatory changes.
Several of the world’s top private equity managers have quietly raised billions of dollars from Mexican pension funds, known as afores, since new rules were enacted early last year, filings to the Mexican Stock Exchange and a non-public document reviewed by Reuters showed. Regulators have authorized some managers to raise more over time.
It was not immediately clear how much in total has been raised to date in Mexico by equity managers, which include Discovery Capital Management, General Atlantic, Partners Group, Lexington Partners and HarbourVest Partners.
Their arrival in Latin America’s second-largest economy comes after a regulatory change in January 2018 that allowed foreign private equity managers to tap into $179 billion worth of pension fund assets for the first time and eased some restrictions on how pension funds invest their assets."
Mexico made the same mistake pension fund managers in the United States did. Parasites were allowed to feast on these collection of funds.
In 2017, Blackrock announced the acquisition of Citibanamex a subsidiary of Citigroups. Citibanamex was Citigroup's asset management arm in Mexico. This deal expanded the asset acquisition capabilities of Blackrock in Mexico. Blackrock has become a significant player in commercial and residential property in Mexico. It was real estate that started Blackrock and exploded in 2008 and 2009 when they acquired very, very cheaply foreclosed homes and then rented them at very inflated charges. From their own website, Blackrock proclaims that they are poised to pounce on the real estate opportunities in Mexico.
If you want to single out the worst enemy for any countries economic future, Blackrock would have to be singled out. It controls over 11.5 trillion dollars of assets around the world. It has top equity holdings in Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Exxon/Mobil and the list goes on. This is truly a vampire corporation who can feed unfortunately day and night.
Great commentary but particularly context! Just returned from Spain and ran into similar graffiti about tourists not welcome. This is doesn't reflect the population, simply a small minority.
Me da mucho gusto que la cdmx te haya recibido con alegría. Siempre es un placer para mí escuchar la perspectiva de extranjeros en la ciudad y que hayan vivido allí lo suficiente como para darse un clavado real en la cultura mexa.
Aunque eso sí, digo “extranjero” cuando en realidad eres ya más chilango que la torta de tamal jaja. Ahora no importa adonde vayas, la CDMX irá contigo para siempre.
Thanks for writing about this. I saw the headlines and wondered how much of a story it was. Getting priced out of your neighborhood crosses culture. When I lived in Colorado the complaint was that Vail, Aspen, Steamboat Springs had been priced out of reach for the “natives”. The most popular tshirt for awhile read “If God wanted Texans to ski, he would have made bullshit white”. Great post.
Ha ha. I am definitely getting one of those t-shirts. As well as the bumper sticker "Texas - bigger than France"
I lived in Texas during the second Gulf War, that and “I’m here for Freedom Fries and not French Fries”, & “Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey” were very popular . And funny.
You're speaking to the heart of what is so thorny about all of this. And like you, I find there are few crowd-pleasing solutions. Mexico is a magical place, so wild it feels like freedom from a firehose. It needs to stay that way.
Indeed it does my friend. All best there estimado Benacci!
great post Ioan. if you crave habanero in cdmx, you'll find habanero..
Well appreciated and all best there JP Spinetto. Imagine a world without habanero chili!
that'd be certainly cause for a real revolution
Nice piece Ioan.
Well appreciated there Jose
The News! Lord, used to read that back in the day. Water-downed hot sauce, the temerity! Next thing you know there will be a demand for corn-free tamales and non alcoholic mezcal.
Ha ha. Non alcoholic mezcal got my belly laugh. Non alcohol pulque perhaps? And gluten free tacos de cabeza...
As a life long Gringo with many experience in Mexico I would like to share this tidbit. I was 10 years old on my first visit to Mexico with my family. We were of the Mormon faith at that time and we travelled West from New Orleans to visit the Mormon Temples in the West. In 1963 all the Mormon Temples were West of the Mississippi River. We found ourselves in Del Rio, Texas. My Father, being a High Priest, was allowed to hold Sacrament Meetings for the far flung Church members. We travelled across the one lane wooden bridge to Acuna where he held such a meeting. Only one way traffic allowed and you had to wait your turn. We were in a 1959 Plymouth I recall. I was smitten. Horses and mules pulling wagons and chickens on a bus. Been back many times for extended stays but that memory remains!
Great memory and anecdote there Gregorio. Those are the gems to keep.
As an Italian-American visitor to México since 1972, I have seen many trends in D.F. and all around the country. Il miei amici Mèsicani have always been welcoming and accommodating. The people of México are warm and very traditional in their beliefs. It’s all about how you treat them. Learn the language. Going from Sicilian dialect to Calo in the cities and barrios is quite amazing. The people of this vast country have a very good grasp of European languages. I go to a Basque restaurant in Lomas de Polando, where I can converse in Spanish, Italian and Inglese. My southern dialect (Siciliano) is understood by many native Méxicanos. The Méxican-American dialect of Pachuco-Calo,@ or simply Calo, segweys amazingly well. The Méxican people are diverse. In Yucatán I’ve been able to pick up some Mayan dialect.This is a wonderful place for American expats too. San Luis Potosí is a conclave all in itself for artisans from El Norte. Give México a chance and you will be well rewarded. These are wonderful people who are very current in all the European-American trends.
Fascinating to hear that Tommy. Id love to hear more of the stories from Sicily as well and the U.S. connection. Let me delve into your posts. Best there friend!
I post on Spanman’s Newsletter if you are interested. Thanks
Ill check it out, cheers
Thank you, Tommy! Sto imparando l'italiano così potrò visitare anche il vostro bellissimo paese!
Continua a imparare! La cosa interessante è che quando vieni in Italia, la maggior parte delle persone parla un ottimo inglese. Non avrai problemi a comunicare. Ciao!
"I think there should be measures against people priced out of their neighborhoods but I don’t know exactly what they are."
You have stated exactly what has been a huge problem for years in the United States. Property tax has been a real problem to the balance of existing residents and the influx of outsiders. In San Francisco, there was a neighborhood of working class Hispanics, mostly Mexican, called Castro Heights. Property was cheap and many of the homes were of historical design. I worked on a few of those. Gays, very wealthy gays, moved into the area, remodeling the homes with doing extensive landscaping. A huge supply of rental housing was gone and property tax skyrocketed. Original residents were economically being locked out of their own neighborhoods. There was violence against the gay homeowners and gay landlords and Mexicans in San Francisco were labelled as homophobic.
Besides the barbaric practice of essentially paying rent for a purchased home and just abolish property tax, economic freedom zones could be established where property taxes are frozen and depriving investors of economic incentives to rehab an area or neighborhood. Also there would be no economic consequences of remodeling your own property. You can also establish rules that any buying of a home you cannot sell the home for four years. This is called flipper laws that some towns have instituted to prevent the constant flipping of properties and the escalation of property tax. Former Republican Jack Kemp, the former quarterback in the AFL, from Buffalo, NY was a lone proponent in the Republican party of this type of social engineering to bring back economically the inner cities and older decaying neighborhoods suffering from the jack hammers of so-called economic progress.
Politicians at all levels in the United States also have been responsible to policies creating cultural divisions. When the second wave of Vietnam's boat people to the United States occurred, the United States starting paying landlords 40-50 percent more money then the local average rent fee charged, for landlords to house the Vietnamese boat people creating unbelievable resentment by existing renters who started being charged the new rental rate established by the United States government and state and local officials. Rent doubled in areas housing the Vietnamese in less then 6 months after arrival of the refugees. You can easily imagine what the consequences would become. This type of massive economic disturbance and now escalated cultural interference has been the policies of countries around the world with the easily predictable outcomes. The transformation of Stockholm, Sweden would be one of the most extreme examples and villages older then 700 years in Ireland.
Very interesting and I never knew that history of the Castro district. There was a classic Simpson episode when Fidel says "America is not so bad. They named a neighborhood after me..." Good to hear some concrete policies. The UK has become a total disaster on housing but then it has on many things.
There's so many dichotomous reactions in Mexico it's mind boggling. Angry at gringos for deporting Mexicans, yet also wanting gringos out of their nicer enclaves. Having an economy that is driven by exports to the USA, yet angry that US companies are buying up resources. Promoting leftist nationalism when one of the basic tenets of leftist ideology is the erosion of nationalism. As a result, Mexicans shouldnt be surprised that Americans are moving investments elsewhere in Latin America and Asia where they are more welcome.
I'd say you are really referring to the leading Mexican ideologies, not the Mexican people. And I agree - current political ideology in Mexico is very much self-damaging.
However, most Mexicans care more about the narco killer that is terrorizing their village with their shiny, new American-made gun in order to sell a bunch of fentanyl to some homeless guy in Cleveland that has lost everything because his society isn't capable of taking care of the people who fall through its cracks.
Even if most Americans are unaware of it, their country also has negative effects on its neighbors, and not only positive ones.
If Mexico hates American Influence, then it should stop having its economy totally dependent on gringo money. Stop taking remittances, stop working for companies whose sole customer is the USA, stop eating at McDonalds, stop shopping at Walmart, stop using American developed pharmaceuticals, etc. become another Cuba or Venezuela.
Thanks Ioan.
My first experiences in Mexico go back to 1964. I was among 700 Canadian University Students who were inspired by the calls for idealism and selflessness and who volunteered for a project that we called the CIASP (Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects- CEPIA in French). It was actually a Canadian Version of a US based project called Amigos Anonymous that was inspired by the call of John F. Kennedy to do good.
We Canadians had several "community development projects" in the rural parts of Hidalgo State, while the Americans (gringos) had projects across Mexico. We worked together and had a coordinating office in Mexico City that was underwritten by Catholic Missionary societies.
We spent some time in Mexico City in an orientation session that exposed us to Mexican History and social reality (tours of the paracaista communities etc). And all of us had experiences like your adventures with the torta.
When many of us first went to Mexico, we were ultra-naive in our idealism since manyactually believed that we were helping a "third world country" to modernize. It did not take long to dispel those misconceptions and we found our hosts were hard-working, intelligent and wonderfully generous people who taught us much more than we could ever teach them.
You may find it interesting to learn that we always reminded people that we were Canadian and not American. There were obvious signs of anti-gringoism and we did find it helpful to remind people of our Canadian roots.
But those Canadian roots were also grounded in a version of paternalism and superiority that overlooked the fundamental values and nature of Mexico. We eventually became aware that we were just a different version of colonialism when we came into close contact with Monsignor Ivan Illich and his CIDOC centre in Cuernavaca. We were inspired by his words and philosophy and reached out to him for advice. We invited him to come to speak to us in Canada, and also to a gathering of Canadian and American volunteers in Chicago. In 1967, in a famous speech called the Seamy Side of Charity, he told us to go home and never return to Mexico unless it was as tourists.
That speech has been widely disseminated online and I have a 58 year old reel-to-reel tape of that speech in Chicago. I have been desperately trying to digitize this old tape for years and hope to have it available soon. It's complicated by the shift in technology and the difficulty of finding old working machines.
Viva Mexico...
This was such a great read, Ioan. Thank you so much for sharing this. I read your books "Gangster Warlords" and "Caudillos del Crimen" while I was incarcerated in the United States for drug-trafficking offenses (I'm out now and on the straight and narrow - education really goes a long way!) and I remember being so impressed by your investigations. It's so great to see that you're still doing what you do best. I look forward to reading more.
Again, thank you for your work.
Wishing you all the best.
Super appreciated there Emmanuel. Good luck on the journey and keep in touch there friend.
I'll be sure to, thank you! I did a lot of reading followed by a lot of writing during my 9-year stay, and I was talking to a literary agent about a project I was working on that dealt with illegal immigration, guns, and drugs in the U.S. This was right before COVID hit, and I'm sad to say I trashed my manuscripts during all the moving around from cell to cell that we were subjected to every time someone tested positive.
I'm still trying to get back to that project (fiction, non-fiction, a little bit of both? That's what I've yet to decide), but it's been tough with everything going on in my life since I got out 2 years ago. I've been rebuilding my life here in Mexico after 25 years of living in the U.S., giving Mexico City a try first, then Queretaro, and now I'm in my homestate of Guanajuato. Needless to say, I'm excited to have found your work once again and I believe it may be just what I need to get back to what I was working on before.
I want to share a bit of my story, in the hopes of leaving something positive in the world. I guess it's redemption I'm after, I'm not sure. I'll share a link below in reference to my charges and sentencing. I know it's a long shot, but maybe we could work on something in the future.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/russellville-man-sentenced-21-firearms-meth
https://mannyssearchformeaning.wordpress.com/?_gl=1*15ehh0*_gcl_au*MTAwNjY3ODE5NC4xNzU0MDYxMTI3
Excelente artículo Ioan
Profundo y directo
Keep up
The good Work
Como periodista
Thanks much and un abrazo fuerte amigo
Good post. Mexico City generally has the most expensive housing costs in the country. Another factor, hotly debated in rising housing costs in the US, is the increasing role of large institutional investors like Blackstone. It can be hard to track, I wonder if there has been an increase in foreign institutional investments in CDMX real estate given price rises. One solution imo is making development easier but most left leaning protestors hate that one ha. From what I know, the left leaning Mexico City government is more restrictive for new developments than most other places in the country and I think could use a dose of YIMBYism as they call it. Cheers!
Hey JD, thanks and that would be interesting to see how much companies like Blackrock or big investors have to do with the price hikes.
Blackrock has huge economic ties to Mexico. When Nieto was President he allowed the first private investment in PEMEX and Blackrock was the first investor. In seven months, Blackrock had secured over 1 billion dollars in PEMEX energy projects, many times as the only bidder. They also were involved in toll roads, hospitals, gas pipelines, prisons and the worst of all pensions. "By placing hundreds of millions of dollars in pension money into its Mexican infrastructure business, BlackRock puts Mexico's state and local governments in an impossible position, says Josh Rosner, an adviser to the BlackRock Transparency Project and co-author of the report. “If a BlackRock-owned infrastructure project becomes ‘a road to nowhere,' and the government wants to stop funding the project, BlackRock can put the official over a barrel and say, ‘You're putting a loss on pensioners,'” Rosner says. “This would force the public official to choose between a waste of public monies and the risk that they would suffer a political loss of voters.” Such an arrangement virtually guarantees conflicts of interest, and possible corruption, in these projects.
https://prospect.org/economy/blackrock-rules-world/
"Blackstone Group has raised $695 million (523.62 million pounds) from Mexican pension funds for its first two local private equity funds, filings showed, joining Black Rock and KKR & Co in expanding in Mexico following regulatory changes.
Several of the world’s top private equity managers have quietly raised billions of dollars from Mexican pension funds, known as afores, since new rules were enacted early last year, filings to the Mexican Stock Exchange and a non-public document reviewed by Reuters showed. Regulators have authorized some managers to raise more over time.
It was not immediately clear how much in total has been raised to date in Mexico by equity managers, which include Discovery Capital Management, General Atlantic, Partners Group, Lexington Partners and HarbourVest Partners.
Their arrival in Latin America’s second-largest economy comes after a regulatory change in January 2018 that allowed foreign private equity managers to tap into $179 billion worth of pension fund assets for the first time and eased some restrictions on how pension funds invest their assets."
https://www.pensionpolicyinternational.com/blackstone-joins-kkr-and-blackrock-in-mexico-private-equity-fundraising/
Mexico made the same mistake pension fund managers in the United States did. Parasites were allowed to feast on these collection of funds.
In 2017, Blackrock announced the acquisition of Citibanamex a subsidiary of Citigroups. Citibanamex was Citigroup's asset management arm in Mexico. This deal expanded the asset acquisition capabilities of Blackrock in Mexico. Blackrock has become a significant player in commercial and residential property in Mexico. It was real estate that started Blackrock and exploded in 2008 and 2009 when they acquired very, very cheaply foreclosed homes and then rented them at very inflated charges. From their own website, Blackrock proclaims that they are poised to pounce on the real estate opportunities in Mexico.
If you want to single out the worst enemy for any countries economic future, Blackrock would have to be singled out. It controls over 11.5 trillion dollars of assets around the world. It has top equity holdings in Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Facebook, Tesla, Exxon/Mobil and the list goes on. This is truly a vampire corporation who can feed unfortunately day and night.
It's good to know the anti American sentiment is a minor problem.
The anti Mexican sentiment in the US is also a only minor problem.
Great commentary but particularly context! Just returned from Spain and ran into similar graffiti about tourists not welcome. This is doesn't reflect the population, simply a small minority.
Great piece Ioan.
Me da mucho gusto que la cdmx te haya recibido con alegría. Siempre es un placer para mí escuchar la perspectiva de extranjeros en la ciudad y que hayan vivido allí lo suficiente como para darse un clavado real en la cultura mexa.
Aunque eso sí, digo “extranjero” cuando en realidad eres ya más chilango que la torta de tamal jaja. Ahora no importa adonde vayas, la CDMX irá contigo para siempre.