Word: mexico
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...same time, political observers like Denise Maerker, a prominent columnist for the Mexico City daily El Universal, fear that provincial governments in places like Chiapas, where the weapons were found, are using 2010 fears as a pretext for cracking down on social activists. "They're drawing questionable links between advocates for the poor and armed groups," says Maerker, who adds there's little evidence that Hernandez is an EPR boss. (See pictures from Ciudad Juarez, the most dangerous city in the Americas...
...have already shown they're willing to use high-profile national celebrations as a stage for narco-terror. Last year, during Independence Day festivities in drug-infested Michoacan state, narcos killed seven people with fragmentation-grenade blasts. Mexicans were rattled again in September when bombs went off at three Mexico City banks and another at a car dealership. No one was injured, but to many chilangos, or capital residents, the explosions seemed a warning of things to come...
Aside from inflated drug and guerrilla violence, another specter is unrest resulting from Mexico's deflated economy. Given its enormous reliance on the U.S. market - and on remittances from Mexican workers there, which have declined sharply this year - the global recession has hit Mexico especially hard. Its GDP, in fact, will contract more than 5% in 2009, exacerbating unemployment as well as Mexico's chronic poverty. A report this year by the Colegio de Mexico, one of the country's top universities, warned, "A national social explosion is knocking at the door." Said top Roman Catholic Bishop Gustavo Rodriguez...
...while many fear the bicentennial year could galvanize that discontent, especially with the symbolic hype surrounding 1810 and 1910, Calderón insists the country will break the ominous century-cycle next year and make 2010 "a moment of peaceful transformation." Last month, he predicted next year will see "Mexico on a different trajectory toward development and progress." Calderón tried to get the ball rolling this month with a major political reform proposal that would allow re-election for Mexican office holders like mayors and legislators, a change he insists will give voters more power. It would still...
Before Calderón can turn the bicentennial into a transformative engine, however, he has to get it jump-started. The economic crisis has forced chronic delays for a quarter of the more than 600 bicentennial projects Mexico had on the drawing board. Rather than being afraid of 2010, says Maerker, Mexicans are instead "just weary, especially of the economic situation." The year 2010 might not offer the fireworks of a revolution, but, unless Mexico can escape its general malaise, the bicentennial might see a quiet but dispiriting national devolution...