Teotihuacán

Mexican writers and artists have joined a campaign to stop the US retailer, Wal-Mart, from opening a store near the famous ruins of Teotihuacan, reports BBC News Online.

Painter Francisco Toledo has likened the construction of the Bodega Aurrerá hypermarket to the proposals to open a McDonalds restaurant in Oaxaca’s centro histórico a couple of years ago. I wrote about this very theme last month. Unlike Oaxaca however, this time the protests seem doomed to failure.

Some coverage this last week of the controversy over the planned Wal-Mart a few hundred metres from the spectacular 2,000-year-old pyramids at Teotihuacan, 30 miles north of Mexico City.

The Guardian reports that conservationists fear that the development will encourage yet more urban spillover from the capital and spoil the largely rural valley for ever. The Financial Times has got it about right in a column today: “Although the chain says the building will be discreet and carry the local Aurrera brand, perhaps it should take a hint from McDonald’s, which was forced to abandon plans to open a franchise in Oaxaca’s historic plaza. Or from Costco, which is still the target of shareholder resolutions after building on the site of the abandoned Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca.”