Thoughts on My Trip to Mexico City and the Drug War
The view of Mexico City from the home office of Ricardo Salinas, the retail/media/banking tycoon.
I spent the first half of this week in Mexico City, on a junket sponsored by Grupo Salinas. There's a lot of worry about Mexico's violence--and I have some of my own thoughts on the topic, below--but I didn't feel at all unsafe. Mexico City is an architecturally beautiful town with a lovely culture of late-night, outdoor dining and delicious street food. Swaths of the city reminded me of the immigrant neighborhoods of south Los Angeles, cut by smog and gridlock, but home to vibrant local business strips and cohesive communities. Indeed, Mexico's economy has been less hard-hit by the financial crisis than ours has.
Our group of writers and policy wonks met with a really interesting list of journalists and politicians, including
