MEXICANS URGE BILLIONAIRE TO LEAVE SACRED SITE ALONE 
	  id AAA22686; Tue, 16 Sep 1997 00:16:58 -0400


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

    Copyright 1997 by Reuters
    Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:14:17 PDT

         MEXICO CITY, Sept 12 (Reuter) - Mexico's richest man was
under fire on Friday after a top official appealed to him to
scrap plans to build a giant shopping complex on Mexico City's
oldest archeological site.
         With the foundations already laid for a shopping mall, a
bevy of fast-food outlets and a 22-story office tower, Mexico's
top archeological official urged billionaire Carlos Slim to take
his project away from the more than 2,000-year-old Cuicuilco
ruins.
         "We are making a plea. Rethink the project, stop it," Teresa
Franco, head of the National Institute of Anthropology and
History, said in a newspaper interview.
         Franco's unexpected appeal followed weeks of protest by
"Over My Dead Body" -- a small but vocal group of Mexican
actors, archeologists and other activists who said Slim was
violating Mexico's heritage.
         They have staged eye-catching stunts outside Seguros
Inbursa, Slim's insurance firm, where cranes and trucks are
already hard at work building the complex just a few hundred
yards from a round-based pyramid built between 800-100 B.C.
         Franco made her appeal just days before hundreds of
Zapatista rebels were due to gather at the ruins -- after
marching into the capital in a peaceful protest to defend the
rights of Indians in southernmost Chiapas state.
         The controversy has dramatized once again the clash between
Mexico's ancient and complex history and its go-go present, as
brash businessmen like Slim seek to build literally on the ruins
of the past.
         Archeologists said the land under development was part of a
settlement several miles (kilometers) wide containing precious
clues about the earliest civilization in the Valley of Mexico
where the capital is situated.
         The center was being built between two Cuicuilco pyramids
that lie about half a mile from each other, and the devolopment
would effectively cut the site in two.
         Archeologists also have found evidence of a lake, possibly
man-made, below the site and the construction would prevent
further investigation.
         Few disputed Slim's ownership of the property, but
protesters said he may have benefited from loopholes in the law
that allowed him to disrupt the integrity of the settlement.
         They also were puzzled over why an industrialist described
by Forbes magazine as the world's fifth richest man, with a net
worth of $6.6 billion, could not choose a less sensitive spot to
expand his business empire.
         According to sources close to Slim, the Cuicuilco shopping
center will form part of a commercial holding of his Grupo Carso
that will be listed on Mexican and U.S. stock markets later this
year.
         "I think what the builders haven't listened to in depth is
the voice of the people," Franco said, noting that in other
respects Slim had been more responsive.
         "They haven't understood that for a large sector of the
population, this is part of their historic inheritance and this
construction represents to them a deep wound."
         In an open letter in La Jornada newspaper earlier this
month, Slim defended his project as one of "urban reconversion"
because the shopping center would stand where an old paper
factory once stood. That building was erected last century
before the ancient ruins, now listed in tourist guides, were
discovered.
         But in the letter he rejected a public plea asking him to
donate the land. He said the government would let it go to waste
and he preferred to turn it into a place where the public could
amuse itself.
         Mexican activists have used color and a bit of humor to
protest the development. Earlier this month, dressed in black
suits and black sunglasses, demonstrators staged a "Men in
Black" blockade of Inbursa, training plastic laser guns on
Slim's employees as if they were extra-terrestrials.
         "What do you want to do next? Turn Chichen Itza into a sushi
parlor, sell Telepizzas at Teotihuacan?" comedian Jesusa
Rodriguez said as she led the blockade, referring to Mexico's
two most sacred archeological sites.
         Underscoring what many saw as complicity between government
and big business, protesters noted that Slim's permission to
build the center -- complete with sushi, taco and hamburger bars
-- was made public the day before ex-President Carlos Salinas
left office on Dec. 1, 1994.
         Slim's wealth soared during Salinas' tenure, especially
after he won ownership of privatized telephone monopoly
Telefonos de Mexico. The two men were close friends.

 
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