The New China?

Is it a climbing wall at your local sports centre, taken over by Trendy Circus Types dressed in white (too much Fellini at their mother’s breast)? Or a relic of the Inquisition, when the Spanish speaking world was ripped and torn between Medieval and Modern; and The-Love-of-God turned into a hated, hooded figure.

Neither. Here are the bodies of five victims of Mexico’s drug wars (30 000 killed in the past decade? No one really knows), wrapped head-to-toe in white and left dangling down the side of an underpass in the northern city of Saltillo. Some of the ‘mummies’ have swung round to face the wall, as if trying to climb up the ropes they’re suspended by. Terrible irony – yes, yes, yes. But you have to hand it to the killers: they’ve made it dead easy for the police to drive by and cut down the bodies.

Meanwhile car production in Mexico is projected to rise 60 per cent by 2020, following $10 billion investment from North American, European and Japanese manufacturers. Mexico is ‘quickly turning into the China of the West,’ according to automobile industry analyst Joseph Langley. To the delight of foreign investors, the Mexican government has established an assembly line of polytechnics and technical universities, producing graduates equipped to work with their world-class kit.

All kitted out in their company polo shirts. All signed up to make regular payments on their house in a newly built, middle class enclave. Happy Days; suburban ways.

It’s Regular Mexico versus the Irregular Economy. Game On between new modern and failed modern. With international backing, the strength of the regular guys should see them through; but really it’s anyone’s guess.