Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Confusing Picture of Monterrey

The divergent messages of two stories about Monterrey that I read this morning was jarring: the first, Nuevo León, long known as Mexico's economic heartland, is enjoying the strongest recovery with regard to job creation of any state in the country; the second, another splashy front-page story about a shootout in Monterrey, which has been a major center for drug violence for most of the year, thanks to the Gulf-Zetas split.

It'd be nice if the broader story behind the first piece of news will sooner or later mitigate the second. I'm not holding my breath, though. At some point, though, it'd be interesting to read a study of how much the economic crisis contributed to Mexico's spike in violence in 2009, and how much the recovery, weak though it may be, will do alleviate it.

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