Metro Line 12
The Mexican government wanted to expand the subway system in Mexico City in the south. It was a very important project for the government and they spent 70% of the Subway system's annual budget on constructing Line 12. One government body was in charge of the trains and another government body was in charge of the tracks and stations. That proved to be a poor method of management as the two entities didn't communicate with one another properly, and the trains purchased, ended up being incompatible with the tracks.
Second problem, the tracks ended up being laid down and designed outside of the technical specifications of the contract, but the government signed off on the work anyway. The result was that the corners were too tight and a train derailed, which closed half of the line indefinitely until the turns are made within specifications. The problem is that legally since the government signed-off on the non-complaint work (probably a bribe or two), they have no legal power to sue the track developer to fix the non-compliant turns. As a precaution for the half of the line that was not closed, the trains now travel at just 35 kilometers per hour (22 mph), instead of the designed 55 kilometers per hour (34 mph). I have taken the train at 22 mph and it is absurdly slow and makes the whole system (or the half that is open) inefficient.
Bullet Train Mexico City - Querétaro
In September the Mexican Government announced that a $4 billion dollar bullet train to be built from Mexico City to Querétaro (210 km) had been awarded to China Railway Corporation.
The problem was that China Railway Corporation was the only bidder on the project, which had initially had several dozen interested firms. So what happened, why did all the other firms drop out? Turns out for this $4 billion dollar project, the government only had a period of 2 months for interested firms to make their proposals, which include binding terms on project costs. In other words, firms had just 2 months to find partner firms, perform studies, calculate estimated project costs (including the cost to operate the rail line for 10 years), and submit their proposals. During this two month process, the Mexican government was continually changing significant aspects of the bid including technical specifications and other terms. The result was that almost all of the firms made requests to extend the deadline for proposals given that they didn't have adequate time to prepare and modify their proposals given the complexity of the project. These companies were not newbies either- Bombardier of Canada, Germany’s Siemens and France’s Alstom These requests were denied and the project was awarded to China Railway Corporation.
A little more about China Railway Corporation, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto had met with executives of China Railway Corporation privately months before the public bidding for the train was announced. China Railway Corporation also partnered with a Mexican company that had built a $7 million dollar house for President Enrique Peña Nieto´s family. Some suspect that Enrique Peña Nieto discussed the project ahead of time with these executives in order to give them sufficient time to prepare their proposal.
Mexico´s 43 Student Tragedy
This last example is truly tragic. On September 26th, students from a rural college that were training to be teachers in rural schools (think schools without electricity), went to protest a dinner party being held by the Mayor of Iguala´s wife. The Mayor´s wife was the sister of the founders of a drug cartel called Guerreros Unidos, The students were protesting the policies of the governor. As context, Iguala has a population of 110,000 and is not far from Acapulco. The Mayor´s wife didn´t want the students to ruin her dinner party so she made a call to the police to "take care of the situation." The police showed up and killed 6 students right away, and rounded up the remaining 43 and put them in buses. The students have been missing ever since. Their fate is not confirmed, but 3 witnesses have emerged with the following story. The police delivered the 43 students to the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel. The drug cartel drove the students into the wilderness and tortured and killed them. They then piled the bodies up with rubber tires and gasoline and burned the bodies for 14 hours. The ashes and bones were gathered and put into garbage bags, and then thrown into the river.
While "authorities" were looking for the students they discovered multiple mass grave sites that they believed contained the students. Forensic tests later determined that each of these mass graves sites containing charred bodies came back negative. It would come out in the newspaper that the students´ bodies might have been found, to later come back and say "nope, nevermind, wrong mass grave." The media presented it as good news that the students were maybe still alive, but Mexicans felt disgusted that there were so many of these mass graves containing who knows who. How can that be good news?
The reprecussions of the incident have been big, but not as big as you might expect. The Mayor and his wife immediately went on the run, but were found a few weeks later thanks to a hefty ransom. The governor of the state where Iguala is, was forced to resign amdist public pressure. There have been huge protests in Mexico City for the 43 disappeared students. The Mexican government is eager to put this event past them, and they hoped that the testimonies explaining the fate of the students would do just that; however, the families of the students, in an excellent political calculation to maximize the impact of this event, refuse to acknowledge that the students are dead until they have their bodies. The effect of this is a lingering political nightmare for the government.
It remains to be seen what will be the long-term effects of the 43 normalistas. The President and ruling party, PRI, has certainly taken a tremendous hit to their political capital, but the Presidential election isn´t until 2018, so people could forget by then. Here are some articles about the 43 students if you are curious.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/crisis-mexico-forty-three-missing-students-spark-revolution?intcid=mod-most-popular
http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2014/10/mexico-s-student-tragedy
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/10/10/355140186/43-missing-students-1-missing-mayor-of-crime-and-collusion-in-mexico
http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2014/11/mexico-s-missing-students
Overall, Mexico is amazing culturally, but if it is going to take off as one of the top 10 most powerful nations, which it easily could, it needs to shore up it´s systemic corruption and increase it´s accountability of public officials.
