*Updated Jan. 17*
Mérida, Yucatán -
Mexican governors will continue to rake in high salaries in 2013, while much of the nation hangs on at a mere subsistence level. On average, a governor in this country earns 90,000 pesos a month. At the current exchange rate, that's $7,059, or almost $85,000 per year. The figure represents base salary, and does not include guaranteed benefits and perks of the job, known here as prestaciones de la ley.
Mexico has 31 semi-autonomous states and a Federal District, the nation's capital and largest city. A majority of the states pay their governors between 70,000 and 110,000 pesos per month. Several have raised them in recent years.
In February 2012 Mexico's federal government reported that about 52 million of its 112 citizens live in some degree of poverty. The well-to-do here earn, on average, 25 times that of the country's poorest (Gross economic disparity still a hard fact of Mexican life). That bitter inequity is compounded by the fact that the median age is 26. A sense of hopelessness among the young is an inevitable byproduct, propelling not a few into the ranks of drug cartels and organized crime.
Poverty increased by about four million people between 2008 and 2012, a statistic often referred to by new president Enrique Peña Nieto and his Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) during last spring's presidential contest. The minimum wage is less than $150 dollars per month. Many of the states are functionally broke, most of them from excessive borrowing. Levels of public indebtedness are of major concern. But governors apparently have taken no heed of the ugly reality, even in the poorest states.
Take Yucatán, for example. About 48% of its population lives in poverty, and between 2007 and 2011 its public debt skyrocketed from a modest $25 million to three quarters of a billion U.S. dollars. Most of the financial mess can be laid at the doorstep of former PRI governor Ivonne Ortega Pacheco, who was recently rewarded by her party when it named her general secretary (prompting angry complaints from some within the local PRI rank and file). In today's edition Mérida's Diario de Yucatán reports the city's very expensive face lift - paid for with millions of borrowed pesos, at the urging of ex-gov Ortega - is already revealing problems, just as the Mayan capital prepares to celebrate its 471st anniversary.
The new PRI governor of Yucatán, Rolando Zapata, began his administration on an encouraging note, with a commitment to cut state expenses wherever possible. But apparently he didn't intend for those to include his own salary. Zapata's gross monthly paycheck is 141,152 pesos ($11,071 dollars), and his net take home is 101,351 ($7,949). He's promised not to raise his pay in 2013, though, probably because he is already one of Mexico's highest paid governors.
Last week president Peña Nieto told a crowd in Tlaxcala state that he would build a new society in Mexico, where all would enjoy a life of dignity, especially the most marginalized. Apparently many of the nation's governors didn't hear that speech, including the one who holds court in downtown Mérida.
Jan. 17 - Under new public transparency laws, Mexico's president, cabinet members and other top governmental officials had to file financial disclosure reports this week. President Peña Nieto did so, and reported, among other things, his salary: about 193,000 pesos per month, which at the current exchange rate is just over $15,000, or about $180,000 a year. That doesn't include generous benefits.
Footnote: So how do Mexican state house salaries compare to what U.S. governors make? MGRR investigated the issue, but could only find data which is a year or more old. In 2010-2011, the average American governor's salary (gross) was $130,595, according to this website. But the emphasis must be on "average," since pay scales vary widely from state to state. For an accurate analysis, one also has to bear in mind that the cost of living generally is far lower in Mexico than in the United States - perhaps 35% to 65% lower, at least in many categories. A rough impression would be that governors here are doing just fine, especially when compared to the masses.
Jan. 11 - Mexico's impoverished grew by more than 11% in two years, with 13 million in extremis
Jan. 4, 2013 - Yucatán pays off some of Ivonne's past due bills
Jan. 4, 2013 - Rolando Zapata, entre los gobernadores mejor pagados
Seven of 10 Mexican households report food shortages
Ending poverty key focus of incoming PRI government
Enrique Peña Nieto's biggest challenges will be economy and environment, not drug cartels
Economic inequality the primary cause of Mexico's insecurity, says Manuel López Obrador
Mexico's southeastern states - including Yucatán - suffer endemic child poverty
Edward,
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect, I am curious as to why you would become an expat reporter in Mexico, then choose to write on the various negative aspects of life in Mexico? It seems to me, many of the issues you write about, run just as deep, if not deeper in almost any American city or state, notwithstanding the massacre of young school children last month. Perhaps its time to move back to the U.S.A. and do your part to make your homeland a better, safer country.
Obviously, my Anonymous friend, you have only the most passing familiarity with MGRR. You might actually want to read some of the nearly 1,000 articles published on this page in the past 18 months before commenting. Why not join the other 25,000 people who get their Mexico-related news here every month?
ReplyDeleteConcerning your “observations:” I write about ALL aspects of life south of the border – good and bad – and on a huge array of topics. Politics, the drug war, business, economics, law, and many other current issues. But unlike most of the foreign (especially the U.S.) press, I tell readers what I believe they really want to know about this country, and what I think they should know. You, I suspect, would prefer to read about sunny skies, sandy beaches, where to get cheap margaritas and discounts on your merchandise, and generally how to lead the “easy expat life.” Have I about got it right?
All of the stories MGRR publishes ORIGINATE in the Mexican press (in Spanish, obviously). Have you missed that fact? The problems is, the American press rarely covers the same topics with appropriate seriousness of purpose – or they cover it inaccurately. That’s why so many readers come to this page every day (about half of all MGRR readers are in the U.S., followed by Mexico, followed by Canada, followed by Europe).
You suggest that I am overlooking serious social problems in the U.S., such as the tragic Sandy Hook massacre. Did you miss this MGRR article, published Dec. 17?
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2012/12/the-second-amendment-and-nra-visit.html
And I cheer the U.S., too, when it deserves praise. Did you miss this MGRR article, published Dec. 15?
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2012/12/happy-birthday-first-amendment-december.html
In short, my unidentified friend, I suspect you are the type of person who likes to be comfortable in your own fishbowl, and not bothered by the problems of the rest of the world. That’s your privilege, of course, but please don’t take me to task for delivering the FACTS. I’m just the messenger, as the saying goes.
Write the MGRR community again, and don’t be afraid to tell us your name. Meanwhile, inform yourself on what’s going on in the world around you. Wake up and smell the coffee. Better yet, wake up and read MGRR.
Sorry to say, but you have me wrong, Edward. I have travelled and worked in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, yet, they do not get the same bad wrap that Mexico gets from the American fear-mongering industry. I am just tired of how said industry has managed to create the perception that Mexico, as a fact and as a whole, is too dangerous to visit, further compounding it's woes. Most North Americans (including many people I know) believe that a vacation in Mexico is a guaranteed death sentence, when in reality, they are probably more likely to be killed in Anytown, USA if they too wandered drunkenly into the wrong section of town looking to buy or sell hookers and drugs. I do read and respect your articles and will continue to do so. My comment was simply based on the concern that many of your articles perpetuate that fear onto people who are less travelled and may not know any better. You know as well as I do that the media tends to sensationalize stories and does not always report the truth.
ReplyDeleteWith Respect,
Anonymous
I'm not exactly sure who this "American fear-mongering industry" is of which you speak. Foreign visitors (especially from the U.S.) still travel to Mexico in huge numbers, based upon all of the reports I read, and so if there is such an industry, it's apparently not having much of an impact. On those very, very few occasions when a reader has written me and flat out asked, "is it safe to visit Mexico," I have ALWAYS replied in the affirmative - even when the question applied to the Riviera Maya and Quintana Roo state, which are presented with significant security issues these days.
DeleteI understand and I appreciate your follow-up comment, but as a working journalist, I just don't agree with it. You say, for instance, that you are "concern[ed] that many of [MGRR's] articles perpetuate fear onto people who are less traveled and may not know any better." What then would you have me do? Stop reporting the facts, in the interest of promoting the multi-billion dollar a year travel industry, which seems to be doing just fine?
MGRR's goal is to report the news, just as it is, and not as anyone else might prefer it to be. I rely overwhelmingly upon mainstream Spanish language sources - and often two or three of them per story. No one has EVER alleged substantive errors with respect to the presentation of the hard facts. When the inevitable minor errors are made - the spelling of a name, a date, the location of an event, etc. - those errors are corrected immediately. I want MGRR to be a site which is trusted and relied upon by its readers, and I believe it is.
I think most readers, whether Americans or not, are craving information that they simply don't get from traditional news sources these days. Example: a few days ago I noticed an AP story about yet another drug tunnel leading from Tijuana to the U.S. side of the border. OK, fine - but it was probably the 10th such story about drug tunnels I've read in the last half dozen years.
How many such stories do we need? Should we presume that readers just want to be entertained, and not informed? Take this post, for instance. How many readers knew that Yucatán is yet a desperately poor place - or for that matter, that almost half of Mexico is? How many readers would have guessed that dozens of Mexican governors are making out just fine, while 52 million fellow citizens aren't? To me, that's what news reporting is all about.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts, and please do so again.
I don't usually return for a final volley, but the topic warrants it. I neglected to present this point in the reply just above, so for the benefit of those who are following the thread, including the Anonymous commenter, here is an afterthought.
DeleteRegular readers of MGRR know that last October, there was a machine gun and grenade attack against the police chief of Puerto Vallarta, which he and his escort narrowly (and fortunately) survived. MGRR published three separate stories on the case within a week, which collectively were read by almost 10,000 people - a huge number for this site. That speaks quite loudly to public interest in the case.
MGRR's first story was published within hours after the event, based upon early Spanish press accounts. If you use the Google search engine, and type in the words "Puerto Vallarta police chief," MGRR's stories will be at the very top of the list.
If the mainstream U.S. press EVER reported on the case at all, I'm unaware of it. Perhaps they did, but I never saw any such story(ies). What possible reason would they have NOT to cover the matter? If a brazen Los Zetas attack against the police chief of a very prominent Mexican resort is not newsworthy, what is? Did someone suppress the story, or did it simply not occur to the writers and editors at the major foreign news desks that the P.V. attack was a big deal? All the major U.S. news agencies have full time correspondents in Mexico City. Their failure to report the attack was curious at best. Some might call it journalistic negligence, others deliberate censorship or suppression.
Here are MGRR's P.V. story links:
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2012/10/puerto-vallarta-police-chief-survives.html
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2012/10/los-zetas-take-credit-for-assault-on.html
http://www.mexicogulfreporter.com/2012/10/puerto-vallarta-police-chief-resigns.html