A Papal Prayer Could Help

As his term winds down, Mexican President Felipe Calderon is banking on a glorious spring to assure that memories of his administration aren't limited to a brutal drug war. In March, for one, Pope Benedict XVI is to visit the Mexican state of Guanajuato, where rival drug gangs already are trying to outdo each other in calling for a truce during the papal tour.

Then, in June, President Calderon is to chair the next gathering of the G20, the finance ministers and often the presidents of the world's more powerful economies, including the European Union, the United States, South Africa, South Korea, India, Brazil, Russia, Japan and France. The intent of the annual meeting is to discuss and resolve issues jeopardizing the stability of the global economy.



Los Cabos Convention Center, three weeks ago...

In five steps from the laptop on which I'm typing I can stand on the second-floor landing of our residence in San Jose del Cabo. When I look west I see the bright red top of a massive crane poking above a hill dense with prickly cactus that hasn't yet been cleared for fairways and homes. When I stroll up there, I can look down at a sprawling and dusty site where construction crews appear to be working 24/7. This is the future home of the Los Cabos Convention Center, where the finance ministers and heads of state of the G20 are to meet in four months.

The website that either Mexico or the G20 created to help showcase the gathering claims that "Los Cabos has all of the necessary facilities...to hold this important international event." That's a stretch, given the frantic efforts to create virtually overnight the region's first substantial and secure convention center. Work on the project began just this fall. Will it be ready for the summit? Local residents are speculating about that, with most seeming confident that it will be. (However, today's Los Angeles Times feature, about Mexico City's controversial bicentennial monument, the Pillar of Light, which was unveiled 16 months late, isn't encouraging.) Even if the convention center isn't ready for the summit, locals are excited about what it will mean for the area when it is finished: A place big enough and plush enough to draw even more foreign visitors to the region's golf courses, resorts, pangas and beaches.



...and yesterday

Why hold the G20 summit here at all, when Mexico City, among other cities, already has the infrastructure to support such a meeting? Proximity to Los Cabos International Airport no doubt played into the decision. But more significantly, some observers speculate, the Calderon administration wants the conclave in one of the country's more remote and isolated states for two reasons: For one, Baja California Sur generally has been free of bloodshed stemming from the administration's pursuit of drug cartels; secondly, protestors who habitually show up at G20 conclaves aren't as likely to go this far out of their way to demonstrate.

A local English-language newspaper, the biweekly Gringo Gazette, puts the cost of the nearly 60,000-square-foot facility at $91 million in U.S. currency. As I look at the scale of the construction, however, that seems low. At the least, I doubt that that figure includes the cost to build an access bridge over the highway that dignitaries will use en route from and to the airport. That's nearly complete.