Mexico's Monterrey still ranks as top city, despite violence

 

MEXICO CITY -- How can Mexico’s “most modern” and “most prosperous” city also be one of its most dangerous?

That is the contradiction that often plays out in this country of great wealth and crippling poverty, of record tourism and skyrocketing homicide rates.

In a new study by the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, or IMCO, the city of Monterrey, at the once-tranquil heart of Mexico’s industrial hub, was ranked No. 1 in most of the things that make an urban center attractive to business and residents. And yet, the report also noted that Monterrey’s murder rate grew by 300% between 2010 and 2011. (Links in Spanish.)

Part of the explanation, the report noted, is that homicides really soared after the cutoff date for the data used to rate competitiveness in the study, late 2010. But security in Monterrey had already begun to deteriorate in early 2009, and other factors apparently sustained the city’s ability to develop and attract investment.

“Before, [Monterrey] was like the United States or Uruguay” in terms of homicide rates, the report noted. “Now, it’s more like Guatemala.”

Yet it continues to have major strengths, the IMCO report said: the nation's highest per capita GDP, 247,000 pesos (nearly $20,000), and second-highest rate of foreign investment; relatively good education; excellent infrastructure and services, like sewage treatment.

Those and other factors were used to measure competitiveness.  Also counted were innovation, labor relations, and government efficiency.  Monterrey was, in fact, the only Mexican city to score the rating of “highly competitive,” the top category.

Monterrey has long been the economic engine of Mexico. It is the center of textile, food-processing, beer and construction industries -- a modern, sophisticated metropolis where per-capita GDP is twice the national average.

It has always been considered Mexico’s wealthiest, and third-largest, city, and for decades its safest. But as long ago as 2006, foot soldiers from the Gulf cartel and its then-ally, the Zetas paramilitary force, were invading poor neighborhoods of the city to recruit followers. Violence exploded in early 2010 when the Zetas split from the Gulf cartel, and by May of that year, authorities were losing control; the air of safety vanished, roadblocks and brazen killings  by narco-traffickers were a common occurrence, some of the elite fled or moved their families. And yet business went on.

"In my opinion, it's not a contradiction because we are saying Monterrey is competitive DESPITE the crisis of violence that it is living," the report's author, IMCO urban development studies director Gabriela Alarcon, said in an email message.

"So far, violence has had an impact on one aspect of competitiveness [security] that, despite being very important … is for now outweighed by Monterrey’s strengths in economic … [and] social aspects … as well as some areas of government that function well.”

Alarcon warned that the key to Monterrey’s future will be to what extent the bad security situation destroys the other areas of the city’s relative success.

For the report, IMCO studied 77 of Mexico’s largest cities, which together account for 80% of domestic economic production and 63% of the national population (link in Spanish).

Ranked at the bottom of the list were Acapulco, where worsening drug-war violence has succeeded in eroding tourism to the once-great coastal mecca, and, in the same state of Guerrero, the state capital, Chilpancingo.

RELATED:

In Monterrey, Mexico, a culture of fear is evident

Memorial to victims of drug war inspires debate

Surge in violence in Mexico's drug war? Figures are inconclusive

-- Tracy Wilkinson

Photo: Police and forensic investigators stand outside a bar in Monterrey, Mexico's wealthiest but increasingly dangerous city, where gunmen attacked. Nine people were killed. Credit: Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images

 

General warns of dramatic increase in cyber-attacks on U.S. firms

ASPEN, Colo.  -- Computer  intrusions by hackers, criminals and nations against U.S. infrastructure increased seventeenfold from 2009 to 2011, the nation’s chief cyber defender says, and it’s only a matter of time before such an attack causes physical damage.

Gen. Keith Alexander, who heads  the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, revealed the statistics in a rare public interview Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum, a gathering of national security officials. He called for passage of legislation being debated by the Senate that would set up a voluntary system for companies to shore up their computer defenses.

The NSA eavesdrops on communications around the world, and it also monitors cyber-attacks. U.S. Cyber Command is responsible for offensive cyber operations.

Alexander did not say how many attacks happen each year against critical infrastructure, such as electrical, water, chemical and nuclear plants. Such intrusions are typically designed  to probe defenses and lay the groundwork for a destructive attack.  Many plants and factories are run by networked industrial control systems, so an attacker who seizes control of such a system could wreak havoc.

Echoing remarks he has made before, Alexander said the U.S. lacks sufficient defenses against cyber-attacks. On a scale of 1 to 10, he said, American preparedness for a large-scale cyber-attack is “around a 3.”

He said he was particularly worried about attacks that could shut down parts of the electrical grid or compromise public water systems.

“Destructive cyber-attacks against critical infrastructure are coming,” Alexander said.

Alexander said the military had yet to work out rules of engagement for responding to cyber-attacks, and he pointed out that neither of his agencies have the authority to defend against a cyber-attack on a private company, even if that company owns crucial infrastructure.  The pending bill would fix that, he said.

Some business groups oppose the bill as intrusive, and some civil liberties groups say it compromises privacy.

Alexander pointedly refused to comment on Stuxnet, a cyber-attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities that has been reported to have been the work of the U.S. and Israeli intelligence.  He also pushed back against the notion that the uptick in attacks on the U.S. is related to Stuxnet, which was first discovered in June 2010.

Alexander repeated his view that computer-based espionage against the industrialized world amounted to “the biggest transfer of wealth in history” because “adversaries have gone into our companies and taken intellectual property.”

He cited one estimate by the security firm McAfee that the losses from such spying add up to a trillion dollars. But, he said, "we don’t know. And which is more alarming:  that it’s really large, or we don’t even know how large it is? … What other countries are doing are stealing the next generation of [our] capabilities.”

Alexander didn’t name the countries, but China and Russia have  been cited by government officials as the biggest culprits, a charge they deny.

ALSO:

Obama administration weighs intervention in Mali

 Swazi protesters infuriated by reports of royal trip to Vegas

Merkel, Hollande vow to 'do everything to protect' the euro

 --Ken Dilanian

Photo: NBC correspondent Pete Williams, left, interviews Gen. Keith Alexander  on  on cyber-security. Credit: Aspen Daily News 

Russians find a new way to get those pesky potholes fixed

Sick of potholes that pock the streets in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg, someone decided to put the unsightly problem in politicians’ faces.

Literally.

Giant caricatures of local officials appeared suddenly on the streets this week, their mouths stretched in surprise over jarring potholes. What appeared to be past promises to fix the roads were stenciled alongside the cartoonish faces, a jab at the continued disrepair of the streets.

“Reconstructing the roads is our main task,” read the slogan alongside the face of Sverdlovsk Gov. Yevgeny Kuivashev, the Moscow Times reported.

The Yekaterinburg mayor, in turn, was reportedly accompanied by a stenciled pledge to finish repairing the roads by April of this year.

Mayor Yevgeny Porunov denounced the graffiti as inappropriate and “polluting,” a news website in the Urals reported. But after the mocking mugs appeared on the streets, crews showed up to clean them off -- and plugged the potholes too.

The pothole problem has long been lamented in Russia. Three years ago, The Times' Megan K. Stack talked to Russian truckers and infrastructure experts about the shoddy roads, left unfixed during its economic boom. At the time, the government estimated that Russia lost 3% of its GDP annually to shabby streets. But the problem was not simply a matter of money, Stack wrote:

The bad roads, experts say, are often courtesy of rampant corruption: Builders end up blowing their budgets on kickbacks for every imaginable body, from health inspectors to police to the contact who awarded the contract. And so they scrimp on materials or blatantly violate standards, confident that the cash doled out will keep everybody quiet and complicit.

The problem has persisted: Russia ranked 130th out of 142 countries on the quality of its roads on the Global Competitiveness Index last year. The country has increased its spending on infrastructure in recent years, hoping to appease Russians frustrated by the ragged streets.

In Yekaterinburg, perhaps a few more buckets of paint would do the trick.

ALSO:

Many Muslims gain weight during Ramadan fasting

Londoners know a thing or two about misery, survey shows

Demolition of Nigerian shantytown leaves thousands homeless

-- Emily Alpert in Los Angeles

Photo: A caricature of Sverdlovsk Gov. Yevgeny Kuivashev is painted over a city pothole. The slogan says, "Reconstructing the roads is our main task." Credit: Ura.ru