The Bosque de Tlalpan is located in the southern part of Mexico City and is also known as the Bosque de Pedregal.  This huge green area was acquired by the city’s authority back in 1968 and opened its doors to the general public, short after.

As you may know, I am a nature lover, and am happy to inform that this forest is considered a protected area since 1997 and it boasts a biodiversity that includes a number of plants and animals, among which it is common to find a variety of pine trees, oaks, eucalyptus, cacti, fungi and a diversity of colorful flowers; also squirrels, opossums, birds and even snakes.

Since 1981, an association was created which is dedicated to the preservation of this place and the organization of different sporting events.   The truth is that once entering the park you tend to forget that you are actually in one of the greatest cities of the world.

In this forest you can enjoy a numerous of outdoor activities, opening from 5:00 AM to 5:00 PM.   The entrance is totally free and there are plenty of parking spaces, restrooms, several kiosks and dining areas, and many running and hiking/walking paths where you will simply admire the beauty of the surrounding.

As a bit of additional information, at one end of the parking lot, you will find the Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan (“Tlalpan’s House of Culture”), distinguished by its original architecture of Chiluca carved stone, completed in 1940, but moved inch by inch to its present site in 1975, rebuilt in 1986 and inaugurated in 1988.  Interesting!

The Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan leads temporary art exhibitions with free admission and also offers courses and workshops (a small fee is charged) of various visual arts, theater, music physical expression, among others.  It is open for the mentioned activities from 9:00AM to 9:00PM.

Both places are located on the Road to Santa Teresa in the Parque de Pedregal neighborhood, in the Tlalpan Delegation.  Nearby, you will find the Metrobus “Villa Olimpica” station.   For more information about the Bosque de Tlalpan you can call 5606-3980 and 5528-6498 and for the Casa de Cultura de Tlalpan call 5606-3839 and 5606-9002.

So if you are in the southern part of the city, I do hope you take the time to visit these places, which are not so touristy but are definitely worthwhile.

Source: US Cenus Bureau (click to enlarge)

The US Census Bureau this month released the 2007 study of Languages spoken in the US.

Contrary to Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin, the US has grown even more diverse than in the past.

These are the conclusions from the press release released by the census bureau at the same time. You can just see the right wing absolutely raging with fury in their wheel chairs. 140% vs 34% as a whole.

The number of people 5 and older who spoke a language other than English at home has more than doubled in the last three decades and at a pace four times greater than the nation’s population growth, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report analyzing data from the 2007 American Community Survey and over a time period from 1980 – 2007.  In that time frame, the percentage of speakers of non-English languages grew by 140 percent while the nation’s overall population grew by 34 percent.

Take that, Arizona! Here’s the complete list of languages and the number of speakers in the study which is available for download (PDF) here.

Spanish or Spanish Creole  ……………….. 34,547,077
Other Indo-European languages …………… 10,320,730
French  ……………………………… 1,355,805
French Creole  ………………………… 629,019
Italian ……………………………… 798,801
Portuguese ………………………….. 687,126
German  ……………………………..  1,104,354
Yiddish …………………………….. 158,991
Other West Germanic languages …………… 270,178
Scandinavian languages  …………………. 134,925
Greek ………………………………   329,825
Russian  …………………………….. 851,174
Polish ………………………………  638,059
Serbo-Croatian ……………………….. 276,550
Other Slavic languages  ………………….. 312,109
Armenian …………………………… 221,865
Persian …………………………….. 349,686
Gujarati  …………………………….. 287,367
Hindi ……………………………….   532,911
Urdu ……………………………….    344,942
Other Indic languages  …………………… 616,147
Other Indo-European languages …………… 420,896
Asian and Pacific Island languages  …………. 8,325,886
Chinese  …………………………….. 2,464,572
Japanese …………………………… 458,717
Korean ……………………………..  1,062,337
Mon-Khmer, Cambodian  …………………. 185,056
Hmong ……………………………..    181,069
Thai  ………………………………..    144,405
Laotian …………………………….. 149,045
Vietnamese  ………………………….. 1,207,004
Other Asian languages  ………………….. 634,608
Tagalog  …………………………….. 1,480,429
Other Pacific Island languages  …………….. 358,644
Other languages ………………………. 2,250,792
Navajo  ………………………………  170,717
Other Native American languages ………….. 200,560
Hungarian  …………………………… 91,297
Arabic ………………………………  767,319
Hebrew ……………………………..  213,576
African languages  ……………………… 699,518
All other languages  …………………….. 107,805

If the broken incentive system were fixed, Wall Street big shots could suddenly be able to “see” the destructive effects of fraudulent and risky behavior. That would take politicians getting out of bed with Wall Street for a couple of minutes, which is unlikely, given how warm and cozy it is Unfortunately, that’s probably not politically feasible.

Locally spent money works better than global corporations would have you believe.

I’m becoming a raging activist, but check out this post at Small Mart (which I found via Corrente). My last argument was for increased tax revenue, here, but come on, this is so simple even an economics ignoramus like myself can see it. This is really something I think about every single time I have to buy something at Oxxo instead of from the lady with a table – and that’s why I try to always buy from the lady with a table.

Growing evidence suggests that every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two to four times more economic benefit—measured in income, wealth, jobs, and tax revenue—than a dollar spent at a globally owned business. That is because locally owned businesses spend much more of their money locally and thereby pump up the so-called economic multiplier. Other studies suggest that local businesses are critical to tourism, walkable communities, entrepreneurship, social equality, civil society, charitable giving, revitalized downtowns, and even political participation.

Oddly, all of this stuff is what a conservative, pro-business party should be arguing for. This is what a chamber of commerce should be yammering incessantly about. Oddly, those clowns – in both countries – seem really most content with business models based more in the Halliburton/Northrup Grumman model. Eventually they will all, only sell everything to the US Military. What a great economy that will be – oh wait. That’s what we have now.

What kind of fantasy is this? Col. San Bartolo Ameyalco right across the line from Delegation Alvaro Obregon, in Magdalena Contreras. Clavelinas here turns into Pirules. See the photo below, right.Clavelinas / Pirules, Magdalena Contreras, the dark green is the Alvaro Obregon Limit

Fortunately, the Delegation Magdalena Contreras is one that I actually know – at least a little bit better than a lot of others in the south. Tlalpan, Milpa Alta and Tlahuac seem farther away than Morelos. But old Magdalena somehow seems like she is still in the thick of Mexico City. We finished up our map the other day and you can see it here.

Colonias La Cruz and San Jerónimo Lidice are both just two of the best known neighborhoods and Los Dinamos is one of the most dramatic of the city’s national parks. We’ll be doing a bigger post about National Parks in just a few weeks.

Our Neighborhood Map of Magdalena Can be seen right here (click the image above)

Here is a translation I did for Wikimapia of the San Jeronimo Lidice entry:

Before the arrival of electricity to this neighborhood, it was called Los Brujos de San Jeronimo, literally The Wizards of San Jerónimo. At night, residents used candles to journey through the streets and residents in bordering neighborhoods, upon seeing the candles came to believe that wizards there attracted the souls of the dead.

Long ago the neighborhood was rich with fruit orchards and is now a very beautiful area of charming alleys and crooked streets and even some weekend homes.
The name, Lídice, was added to the neighborhood of San Jerónimo, as well as to the reconstructed Theater Lídice, the Plaza Lídice and Colegio Lídice, in commemoration of the Czechoslovakian town which suffered one of the worst massacres by the Nazis during World War II. The tragedy in Lídice occurred on June 9th and 10th of 1942 and news of it shocked to the world. The Embassy, along with the Mayorship of the Colonia Magdalena Contreras organizes a commemoration each June.

On the 60th anniversary of the tragedy of Lídice, the governments of Mexico City and the delegation of Magdalena Contreras ratified their commitment to peace, justice and solidarity with a mural in the Lídice Plaza, “Luz y muerte” by artist, Ariosto Knoll.

So without too much fanfare, here is our newest Colonias Map on Eldefe.com. Click the image above to see the actual interactive map.

Magdalena Contreras boasts some of the city’s highest elevations, and thus is the city’s most frequent recipient of snowfall.

When I used to visit a friend right in the heart of La Cruz, almost every weekend would turn to a trip to Los Dinamos.  It was a winding and twisiting journey, up, up and up. We’d have some quesadillas and marvel at the stone out croppings and the massive pine forests that greet the sky there. And yes, I did definitely see some snowfall while lunching in a little fonda in the style of a Swiss chalet.

The photos below show some  of Magdalena’s typical mountainous neighborhoods and streets – places so charming that I end up biting my fists and asking why are these places not the tourist paradise they should be.

Corner of Orquidea & Octopec, Colonia Lomas de San Bernabé

A little street shrine in Magdalena Contreras.

A section of Pueblo Nuevo Alto wedged onto a hillside just south of Avenida San Jeronimo.

Football fields at col. Lomas de San Bernabé Amp.

And a really nice photo from Panoramio/armis_geografico. Click the photo for the original.

Football in col. Lomas de San Bernabé Photo by armis_geografico

Click here to visit our full map of delegación Magdalena Contreras, Distrito Federal

The Independently owned Bead Store in the Monitor Article, Photo Barnes for the CS Monitor

What Kind of “Growth” are we talking about?

There’s something missing from this CS Monitor story, “Who’s creating US jobs? Mexicans.”

Namely, US Citizens have, for thirty years now (maybe longer) been preached at and screamed at and basically lied to that “Small Businesses do not create growth.”

Certainly not at anything like the rates of growth that our great MBAed leaders have come to expect when they’re talking about growth.

No matter that small businesses account for 9 out of 10 jobs created in this economy, that economy or any economy – if you have an MBA then THAT is not growth.

Taylor Barnes in the Monitor has a nice take on things:  It’s so violent in Mexico that the rich people have to leave. Which should be another snore-fest. I read that story about 6 times a week.

The interesting thing is that with a mere 200,000 dollars, a Mexican can be an “entrepreneur” in the United States. Barnes’s reporting is on the number of visas issued and the ease with which those visas can be obtained by Mexicans.

The going rate for Americans to be entrepreneurs, it would seem,  is more like 1.5 million dollars. And that certainly couldn’t be invested in a small business. Though small businesses are, in the US version of economics, part of the formal economy (see this morning’s rant), small businesses are sort of the US version of Ambulantes. They get fewer tax breaks, and really, they’re not even particularly prestigious. Owning the little corner store is tantamount to being, well, Mexican! Right?

As I wrote (partly) last month, it’s going to be interesting to watch the sea-change sweep over the USA, as Mexicans teach Americans how to run a downtown full of independently owned, sustainable growth businesses, the kind that keep some of the profits at home.

Yves Smith, from NakedCapitalism.com interviewed on FoxBusiness News

This is what people end up studying at EXPEnglish. Because our courses are custom designed for students and because so many of the Finance people are talking to – or trying to talk to – New York – we end up trying to understand some of the news that is streaming endlessly from that part of the world.

ExpEnglish is designed for Mexico City professionals who need to learn English while they are working.

It’s not easy. TV news people are always trying to squeeze 5 minutes of talk into 1 minute of video.

So, the video below is interesting, and I at first thought it was relatively calm. Yves Smith talks a terrible stream, but it’s a little bit less “breathless” than the normal Bloomberg stream that so many people in Mexico City finance and trade are ignoring, day after day.

I was surprised though, when I broke some of it down, at how much everyone in New York talks with the same “buzzwords” and TV jargon. Not to be needlessly critical. If anything, I should watch more finance video just to remember what it sounds like up there. With that, here is the video. And below is a list of the useful words and expressions in the video.

See how much of the English vocabulary (words and phrases) below you can pick up from the video above:

• Kosher – Most of my students understand this as the type of cooking that Jewish people do. In New York, and maybe in the whole world of Finance now, it’s extended to mean “our way” or as is customary – on down to something’s being merely “acceptable.”
• Under the law – within the normal interpretation of a law or regulation.
• to Disclose – (verb) to make known, to show.
• Doesn’t smell right – gives off an immediate and apparent signal that something is wrong.
• Smell test – an initial, immediate judgment as to legality or “kosherness”
• Too conflicted – with too many conflicts, too many negative factors
• Some ethics behind it – disregarding the normal regulations or procedures or standards of disclosure
• Defraud – (verb) the verbal form of fraud – to deprive of a right, money, or property by fraud
• Up to the edge of the law - an action that goes beyond the normal interpretation of the law without technically violating the law.
• Slowly chipping down the regulation – continued lax interpretation of a law or regulation such that the original intent is weakened in severity or enforcement
• to Chip (away) – (verb) – in stone carving, removing small pieces, by carving or hammering
• “It’s now permitted though it’s not kosher” – Technically legal but not necessarily ethical
• Whittling away – Similar to chipping away (I’ve mispelled this word a number of times with some of you, check your notes)
• to Whittle – (verb) -to cut, trim, or shape (a stick, piece of wood, etc.) by carving off bits with a knife

• 

  ExpEnglish is always going further.

  Layering on – (verb) – to layer on – to add successive layers

• Gray area – indistinct or unclear areas
• to Bend the rules – (verb) – to permit minor exceptions to the rules, regulations, law etc.
• The elephant in the room – the most obvious thing
• The laws on the books – The literal laws or regulations, as written
  
• “I want to see some heads roll” – Not the best metaphor to use in Mexico, but figuratively, a call for accountability, or for serious repercussions
• “It’s in bankruptcy court and it’s too complicated.” – A way to signal that heads will not roll.

If you’re interested in adding some of ExpEnglish’s vocabulary on a regular basis, see our complete information pages on eldefe.com.

Paloma Negra, Benito Juarez, Chimulhuacan, EdoMex (Street View)

“The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.”

-Peter Cathorpe, quoted in Prospect Magazine

In one of my past lives I was hawking supposedly environmentally friendly office-building style condos near the coast of Nayarit. Even then I thought to myself, “That thing is about as green as a Hummer with a dandelion decal on the bumper.” They sold, though I’m not sure any of them ever got built.

Not surprisingly in that line of work, there was infrequent reference to “the slums of Mexico City.” Foreign buyers are always re-assured that most of Mexico is safe, you just have to avoid the drug war and the “Slums of Mexico City.” Having lived in Mexico City now 5 years, I can assure you that “slums” are few and far between.  The article I’m looking at today defines slums thusly: “the conurbations made up of people who do not legally occupy the land they live on.”

In Mexico City, that would be a big part of Chalco, where the worst part of the flooding took place over the past several weeks. Then there are remaining strips of the poorest places in the city. These have been, over the last several decades, largely built up to the point where they are but underdeveloped, usually narrow zones, subsumed as it were into the larger urban mass. Rafael made reference the other day to pigs and chickens on the roof in Neza, but I think his whole point was that today’s Neza is not like it used to be.

Chalco is far to the south east of the city. But within the city, you can encounter the poorest of the poor neighborhoods in a very few places in Iztapalapa, Atlampa in Delegación Cuauhtemóc and a few other places. If anything they seem now like just busted streets where the houses are thrown together mostly out of refuse. They don’t go on for acre after acre. But this line from the Prospect Article really caught my eye.

Alleyways in squatter cities, for example, are a dense interplay of retail and services—one-chair barbershops and three-seat bars interspersed with the clothes racks and fruit tables.

That sounds more and more like all the places in Mexico City that I am most fond of. And here it turns out, is another reason my fondness is justified. Also from Propsect:

• Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density—1m people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai—and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.

• Urban density allows half of humanity to live on 2.8 per cent of the land.

• “Cities are so much more successful in promoting new forms of income generation, and it is so much cheaper to provide services in urban areas, that some experts have actually suggested that the only realistic poverty reduction strategy is to get as many people as possible to move to the city.”- The Challenge of Slums, a 2003 UN-Habitat report quoted in the Prospect Article

• Consider just the infrastructure efficiencies. According to a 2004 UN report: “The concentration of population and enterprises in urban areas greatly reduces the unit cost of piped water, sewers, drains, roads, electricity, garbage collection, transport, health care, and schools.” In the developed world, cities are green because they cut energy use; in the developing world, their greenness lies in how they take the pressure off rural waste.

So, folks can have those office-building-looking condos on the coast. They can’t match the sustainability of living closer to other people. Score one more for the densely populated city.

On Guelatao going into Nezahualcóyotl

Rafael Zafra is studying English language writing with the ExpEnglish Blogging Program. A student in International Relations at UNAM in Mexico City, his posts in Spanish are published on eldefe.com.

Nezahualcóyotl or ‘’Neza’’ in its short form is a municipality of Estado de México in Mexico City where people are known for their ‘’unsophisticated attitudes.’’

They proudly write Nezahualcoyotl on their Taxis

This little city borders the east side of Mexico City.  Honestly, I rarely talk about myself in Nezahualcóyotl with my friends or other people because I always feel they would deduce that I have some kind of bad manners or maybe I am some kind of uncivilized person if I go there. It’s a prejudice that I’ve just learned or picked up while growing up in this city.

When I mention Neza I can easily say many words related to it that I am sure other people would immediately understand. Words like “naco,” poverty, gangs, ugliness, rudeness, over-populated, unsophisticated, uncivilized, guns, horses in the middle of the street, pigs and chickens on the roofs, overgrown houses, lots of markets and no green areas. Some of them are true, some of them are false.

The truth is that my life is closer to Neza even today than anyone could imagine. I have always felt that I would hear at least some of the adjectives I mentioned above if I said something about me and Neza and that is why I hardly talk about it. I could talk about myself and my academic background at UNAM. Or about me and my family from Puebla but I would never say Neza is where I first lived when I came to Mexico City. It’s where I started my elementary school when I was 6 years old. Then me and my family moved to Iztapalapa but I still studied there.

Since then I can remember some places that have made me happy, although Neza has changed over the years and many places have disappeared since I left it. I could still easily find places and walk through its streets. It is not the place where I have established my relationships or my life so I may not have a real description of it, but its places have formed part of me.

The Hungry Coyote at the center of Nezahualcoyotl.

When I was a child I was taught at school that Nezahualcoyotl means ‘’hungry coyote’’ which I always related to its people in that they have got some sort of energy that has made them different and even special and formidable. Most of its people are hard workers living under difficult circumstances and who have`t had time to study. So, many of them are vendors and sellers and dealers in whatever, all of whom have built their own businesses. And that is why I don`t agree with those who say it is a poor part of the city. Certainly Neza has grown fast, strong and even wealthy.

The New Ciudad Jardín Bicentenario

The interesting thing about this little city inside the city is that it was built in the 1960’s after a lake started to dry up. It was what remained of the giant lake that covered what had been Mexico City. In spite of its growth (or because of it), Neza has been built without good urban infrastructure. That may be the reason it can look like is not a really beautiful place to live, but the truth is that its beauty remains in its energy and its people.

Interior Plaza Jardín, Nezahuacóyotl, from the opening story on eldfe.com

Unfortunately the danger still there, alongside all those big markets that cover whole kilometers and that clog avenues on a specific day of the week all around Neza. A specific day is set such that those big serpents of stands visit every part of the city and there you can find whatever you want. I remember my brother looking for a gun with the people he got along with and all of whom worked right there. There are usually many young people working there especially selling good clothes for reasonable prices. In that way the market become a place to hang out. Beer is actually sold on the street so going to those markets called ‘’tianguis’’ can be really fun.

A new really interesting project has been built where there used to be a giant garbage dumb with about 10 million of tons of trash. All the garbage from Mexico city used to be poured here in this despised part of my city.

The photos above are taken in places that used to look like this!

The government and some of the richest business men like Carlos Slim have built this new complex. Actually I did not even know they knew this part of the city exists.

Anyway, in this new project, called Ciudad Jardin, people can find those expensive stores that used to be far away from Neza, along with blocks of luxurious and expensive apartments and government buildings. I find that a little bit ridiculous because people always will prefer to buy their goods in their precious and crowded ‘’ tianguis’’ and they will always find there what they will never find in those expensive and boring stores. I guess they will prefer to build themselves their really big and shapeless houses with a couple of dogs living on the roof to living in spaces that could not be adapted.

Neza has secretly made me happy. Certainly I will never be able to talk about Neza without embarrassment but I will never forget that it is where I first got drunk when I thought that an ugly and unsafe night club was the funniest thing in the world, when I thought Polanco, Roma, Fuente de Diana or Valle de Bravo were simply the names of the streets near my school and not really luxury places in Mexico City. It is where I first kissed a girl and where I happily had my first real friends.

Definitely, I will never be able to hide the Neza part of myself.

Laguna de Caltongo between Barrio San Cristobal and Colonia Caltongo.

The best Xochilmilco neighborhoods map yet.

We’ve been a little hesitant to announce the completion  of the Xochimilco map on eldefe.com because it seems more than the usual number of inhabited-looking places are not listed as official colonias by the authorities in the city government. But what the heck. If someone wants to straighten us out, we’re more than happy to be corrected in the comments section below.

Worth pointing, though, is the long stretch (about 4.5 miles) of mostly green-houses, along the northern side calle Nuevo León. I mean, we could just do a post of screen caps of those green houses until next winter and we still wouldn’t be tired of them. Luckily, that same long stretch of Nuevo León is among the few places in Xochimilco where the Street View truck ventured, so you can get a good long look at how the place looks and feels (click here to start at the beginning).

Green houses in the un-named wilds of Xochimilco

Here’s a quick grab of the long Nuevo Leon street’s sleepy character:

Calle Nuevo leon xochimilco, Source: StreetView

Xochimilco get’s it’s fair reputation on the tourism and travel circuits – for indeed, it is a unique, beautiful and worthy place to visit. The satellite images show a place that is always just barely floating above the water table, criss-crossed by a labyrinth  of canals and populated nevertheless by chilangos from every corner of the country.

The third largest delegation in terms of area, Xochimilco, like most of DF is too big to know entirely but from the air you can get a much better sense of it. It’s also littered with more beautiful places than can fit onto a regular tourist map so you might as well try to use our map and know as many as you can.

Among the other places to visit:

San Mateo Xalpa cuts a striking profile at the foot of a mountain traversed by the Cuernavaca Highway to the south.

San Mateo Xalpa, pictured above, is the one of the Pueblos Originarios in Mexico City, and of which there are many in Xochimilco.  Pueblos Originarios is a program to bring awareness and maybe some tourism, to these, some of the most spectacular and oldest little towns around Mexico City.

The complete list of Xochimilco Pueblos Originarios is below:

San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, Xochimilco
San Francisco Tlalnepantla, Xochimilco
Santiago Tepalcatlalpan, Xochimilco
Huichapan, Xochimilco
Santa Cecilia Tepetlapa, Xochimilco
San Mateo Xalpa, Xochimilco
Santa Cruz Acalpixca, Xochimilco
Santa Cruz Xochitepec, Xochimilco
Ampliación Tepepan, Xochimilco
Santa María Tepepan, Xochimilco
San Lucas Xochimanca, Xochimilco
San Andrés Ahuayucan, Xochimilco
San Gregorio Atlapulco, Xochimilco
San Lorenzo Atemoaya, Xochimilco
Santa María Nativitas, Xochimilco
Santiago Tulyehualco, Xochimilco

Have some fun with the rest of our map of Xochimilco. It’s live on eldfe.com now.