Mexican President Felipe Calderon is figuratively going out on a limb — and literally down a sinkhole, up a river (with a paddle) and over the top of a few pyramids — in an attempt to boost Mexico’s flagging tourism industry.
The balding, 49-year-old leader is personally trying to change his country’s violent reputation by appearing as a sort of adventure tour guide in a series of TV programs to be broadcast starting next month on Public Broadcasting Service stations in the US.
The president dons an Indiana Jones-style hat and a harness and descends a rope into the 375m Sotano de las Golondrinas cavern, accompanied by Peter Greenberg, host of the The Royal Tour TV series. Calderon also straps on scuba tanks to lead Greenberg into a sinkhole lake known as a cenote in Yucatan. And he helps a Lacandon Indian paddle a boat down a river in a jungle in southern Chiapas State.
In the 30-minute videos, Calderon breaks from his image as a lawyerly policy wonk best known for launching a bloody, controversial offensive against drug cartels. He plans to attend the show’s premiere in New York next month, an aide said.
“I have other duties that are more dangerous,” Calderon jokes, dangling midair in a cavern as a rope lowers him 100m to the bottom. The site is in the Gulf coast region of Mexico known as the Huasteca, which is covered in jungle and dotted with caverns, waterfalls and crystalline pools.
Calderon swaps the explorer hat for a helmet with a headlamp for the descent into the Golondrinas cave, named for the huge flocks of birds that live inside. Calderon also appears in underwater footage from the stalactite-studded cenote in Yucatan, where he flashes the camera an “OK” signal from behind his dive mask.
Analysts say the videos represent a distinct break from the solemn treatment that has long characterized the Mexican presidency, but fit in with Calderon, who has emphasized using the media to get his message across, and who has sought to project a forceful image.
“That’s always been his objective, the whole macho thing,” said John Ackerman, of the legal research institute at Mexico’s National Autonomous University.
In 2007, soon after putting the army on the front line of his offensive against drug cartels, Calderon departed from presidential tradition by putting on an olive-green army jacket that was a few sizes too big for his short frame, an image that has been widely lampooned in newspaper cartoons ever since.
“From the very beginning, using the military uniforms and saluting, it’s always been his kind of thing,” Ackerman said. “It doesn’t quite fit with his physical appearance.”
Drawing criticism, Calderon’s administration took the image-building a step further this year by funding a privately produced TV miniseries glorifying the federal police, which was broadcast by the country’s largest network. On Friday, the navy told local news media that it was letting private producers use navy locations to make a miniseries about the force, but that the navy was not financing any of the production.
Calderon’s message in the latest videos is that Mexico is safe for tourists.
“This is part of a strategy to promote the country abroad,” Mexican Tourism Department spokesman Roberto Martinez said.
Nobody argues that Mexico’s tourism needs a boost.
According to the country’s central bank, overall foreign tourism last year, not including border-area visitors, was still 6.3 percent below 2008 levels, and the first half of this year saw a 2 percent decline from the same period last year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not