Yearly Archives: 2018

Luis Rubio  Mexico is a walking contradiction. Ambitious reforms have been implemented and, nevertheless, the results, at least on average, are not praiseworthy. The problem is the average: the country is experiencing extreme contrasts between a poor south that barely stays alive and a north that grows at almost Asian rates. There are entire regions […]

Luis Rubio The symptoms -and paradoxes- are evident everywhere. No one can avoid seeing them, whatever their circumstance, party persuasion, or activity. The country is springing leaks all over and, at the same time, it possesses impacting strengths that are not wholly exploited because something limits them, stands in their way. Mexico has made enormous […]

 Luis Rubio The contrast between the economic reforms of the last decades and those of an electoral-political nature is striking. The first have followed an impeccable logic and are characterized by their clarity of purpose. The second ones have all been reactive, tiny and of changing compass. One can agree or disagree with one or […]

Luis Rubio Nostalgia is pernicious as a guide for action for government, but that does not seem to dissuade many. The notion that a past can be recreated that, in retrospect, seems idyllic, has such an obvious appeal, that invites prospective rulers to create mental utopias and proposals that capture emotions, which does not make […]

Luis Rubio From its Independence, Mexico lived disputing its form of government. Edmundo O’Gorman describes with great vehemence the debates, disputes and disagreements that took place as to whether the country should be republican or monarchical, centralist or federalist, conservative or liberal. In more recent years the discussion has been about whether the political system […]

Luis Rubio “The next five years will be key in the decisions we make to move Mexico towards a knowledge economy,” say José Antonio Fernández and Salvador Alva in their recent book A Feasible Mexico (Un México Posible). The statement would seem like a truism, but it collides with the prevailing environment: some welcome the […]

 Luis Rubio The world changes when people accustom themselves to the unacceptable, when they see as natural what is not, such as insecurity. Instead of protesting, exacting and demanding the construction of a security system that attends to the needs and interests of the citizenry, we Mexicans are becoming accustomed to living under the yoke […]

Luis Rubio Kafka, according to the anecdote, should have been Mexico’s local customs and manners author. Perhaps even he would have never imagined the absurdities of Mexicans’ daily lives. In a Patricio Monero cartoon, the schoolmaster queries: “Wouldn’t it have been better to first have the new educative model and afterward the teacher evaluation? The […]

Luis Rubio   A somber panorama was presented by the parents and relatives of thousands of the disappeared on Reforma Avenue a few weeks ago. An infinity of crosses, on both sides of the avenue, each representing people whose relatives -children, parents, brothers- one day simply did not return. Nobody knows if they were killed […]

Luis Rubio All the evaluations of the problems of the Mexican economy usually include: lack of credit, industrial plant competitiveness and the competition from (mostly Chinese) imports. Each of these symptoms possesses its own dynamic and structure of causality; what the three have in common is that, at heart, it’s the same problem. First off, […]