What Are The Most Serious Problems Mexico Faces?
By Dr. Jos Enrique Vallarta Rodrguez In late February I attended a seminar on Mexico that featured a number of academic specialists on Latin American affairs. And during one of the analysis sessions a scholar was asked what, in his opinion, are the most serious and urgent problems Mexico faces? His response was simple: “The inequitable and unjust distribution of wealth, and [the need] to break with the history of bad guys (“chicos malos”) always winning in Mexico.” The response was simple but true. For example, one can look at the early March issue of Forbes magazine that lists the personal fortune of Mexican businessman Carlos Slim at US$49 billion, up US$19 billion from last year. Slim is in third place on the billionaires list, after Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The inequitable distribution of wealth in Mexico is evidenced by Slim’s fortune that has increased greatly since his acquisition of the government-owned national telephone system, Telfonos de Mxico, in 1990. While a part of
