Dialogue with Jose Angel Avila, Deputy Mayor of Mexico City (February 25th, 2010)

His background

As a seasoned public official, Mr Avila has more than 30 years of experience under his belt. Being trained as a lawyer at the Escuela Libre de Derecho, his career in the public sector began as the Executive Secretary of the Board “Educacion Para Todos” in the government of Mexico City. From 2002 to 2006 he was Chief of Staff to the Chief of Police in Mexico City, a city with more than 14 million inhabitants. Since 2006 he serves as Deputy Mayor of Mexico City. 

The importance of Mexico City’s evolution.

 Mr Avila’s remarks cantered around the importance of The City as the economic/social and political thermostat of the country. According to Mr Avila, ever since its inception, the jurisdictional characteristics of Mexico City’s government have shaped the way politics ...

That was the opening remark that Josefina Vázquez Mota said to the group of Mexican students who gathered the morning of February 21st at the Harvard Law School as part of the opening event for the initiative México, Adelante. She shared her experience as Minister of Social Development and Education in Mexico in the administrations of both presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon. Her talk focused on the lessons learned from different programs and initiatives during her work in the federal administration and on the importance of building an agenda of, at least, minimum agreements in the work of the Congress.

“In Mexico things have changed, but one that has not changed at all is the structure of our decision-making processes”, said Josefina when she pointed that “as a generation we [the political class] have been trained very little in generating political agreements, […] and we cannot rely on a political ...