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Conrad Fox radio and reporting
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Conrad Fox is an independent journalist and radio producer based in southeastern Mexico. He travels Mexico reporting on poverty, development and human rights for the World Vision Report and other radio programs in the US and Canada. cwfox@hotmail.com | ||
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Waiting for aid Mexican bureacracy is onerous at the best of times. Try negotiating red tape when you've got no papers, no telephones, no roads, and nowhere to sleep. That's what it's like for victims of Hurricane Stan in Chiapas, still trying to get the government aid they were promised six months ago. listen... |
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Two-wheeled banks In out-of-the-way parts of Mexico, it's not surprising few people save money. Bus fare to the nearest bank can cost more than they can scrape together each month. But some credit unions aren't waiting around for customers. They're braving dogs, potholes and even bandits, and riding out to meet them. listen...
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World Vision rural poverty
series: Border Colonias Not all of Texas' colonias are crumbling shantytowns. New laws have improved conditions and hard work has enabled many residents in these neigbourhoods along Mexican border to build themselves a decent life. But the colonias keep growing, and for every success story, there's another of desperate hardship unfolding on the hidden margins of America. (Finalist, 2005 Harry Chapin media awards.) listen...
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Passing water in Mexico City When a Mexico City inventor trying to develop new paints accidentally produced a concrete that lets water run through it, he was too embarrassed to show his friends. But they saw in this invention a solution to the city's impending water crisis... and royalties for them. Tens years on, the friends haven't got rich yet, but Ecocrete has received international attention as a paving material that's friendly to parched aquifers. listen...
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Fishing next to a giant Mexico's state oil-monopoly provides almost 40% of the country's revenue. Perhaps it's not surprising then that post-911 security measures around their Gulf of Mexico platforms are some of the most extensive in the world. But the heavily-patrolled no-go zones have cut into traditional fishing grounds, and angry fishermen say that's shortsighted. The oil will be used up in ten years, they say, whereas fishing could have gone on forever. listen...
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photo:janet schwartz |
Chiapas jihad
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Palenque: pantheon of
hippies You might think the tourists at the top of the pyramids raising their arms to the sun for a few rays of celestial energy were a recent phenomenon. But ever since the European discovery of this ancient site two centuries ago, a it's been a stange attractor for a veritable who's who of new age cosmologists. And it's not a come-down for this once mighty imperial center. With its fantastical reliefs and awesome size, it was surely built to reduce visitors to burbling idiots. read...
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In Search of the Seri A broken-down Cadillac isn't meant to cross the desert, but then people aren't meant to live in it. They do, clinging to the land and their own souls with the tenacity of cactus. There's the ice-cream seller, Julio the world-traveller, Doreen the ultralight pilot, and, at the end of it all, the fierce and feared Seri Indians. read... |
photo:
jon roeder