Monthly Archives: December 2009

Nobody can ignore the social inequality that Mexico suffers nor scorn the human cost that it represents or the huge missed opportunity that its sheer existence entails. Inequality goes hand in hand with poverty but it is not the same: they coexist and are the result of structural and historical circumstances. Although it is impossible […]

Stalin once said that people who place their vote in the ballot box do not decide anything. According to the Soviet dictator, the true decision makers are the ones who count the votes. The reconfiguration of the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) in the mid-nineties sought to respond to a quasi-Stalinist reality: the hypothetical Mexican democracy […]

“Flash 18” was the code that a policeman once gave a friend of mine so that nobody would stop her again for having failed to take her car to the twice yearly pollution test. After threatening to take her to the police station, the motorcyclist offered her the traditional alternative: for a small fee he […]

It is time to legalize the informal sector of the economy. For decades, we have lived in the fictitious world that claims that the real world, the good world, and the statistically relevant world is that of the formal, duly registered economy. Reality however, tells us otherwise. The informal economy is dynamic and employs millions […]