This Tuesday, a crime report on Mexico City was presented in the morning, according to which most crimes are at historical lows in recent decades, which, among other things, would place the capital as a city safer than New York, Chicago or Los Angeles.
Experts on these issues will tell us if the hard data supports such a conclusion or if the interpretation of the presented document is erroneous.
But even if these figures are being read from their brighter side, so to speak, the truth is that crime in Mexico City has decreased.
And this is palpable in many ways.
Some neighborhoods such as La Condesa or La Roma have been populated by foreign tourists, to the extent that in their parks and on many cafeteria and restaurant terraces curious scenes are observed in which foreigners outnumber Mexicans.
They have literally inundated these areas, turning them, in the eyes of visitors, into an exotic and cheaper version of New York or London's Soho.
In addition, it is a different type of tourism than the one that used to come to the capital, which did so for two or three days and on many occasions as a way to the pyramids or to beach sites.
The one now is a tourism of young people and young adults who come to settle for weeks or months in Airbnb rooms and apartments and integrate into the life of the neighborhood.
I understand that this is not in the entire metropolis,
but it is symptomatic because they would not be arriving if they perceived that the city is unsafe.
Let us remember that the diminution of the terrible insecurity crisis that New York experienced in the 1980s was the key to the resurgence of the Big Apple.
Who got the credit, whether for justifiable or inflated reasons, Rudy Giuliani, then a city attorney, became mayor and embarked on an ambitious career in national politics, later hampered by his own mistakes.
I quote the above to add water to the mill of political reflection.
Tuesday was a remarkable day for Claudia Sheinbaum, heading into the presidential succession.
The decrease in crime in the capital has a significant value for Andrés Manuel López Obrador himself, because the issue of insecurity and the geographic expansion of the cartels is considered one of the lines of duty for the six-year period of the Obrador.
Every week the president has to advocate his strategy of hugs, not bullets in the face of scandalous bloodshed, and in that sense the favorable results of the capital represent ground gold for his cause.
That Mexico City, the main territorial bastion of the movement, is managing to reduce this problem offers López Obrador an enormous trophy to show off when the time comes.
For decades, the violence of the cartels, worrying as it was, was considered a problem relatively limited to the production and transit areas.
Then it began to expand to other territories, but it was assumed that the capital of the country was outside, except for the occasional cases caused by drug dealing.
However, in the past six-year term, the rapid growth in the number of murdered and the proliferation of extortions in bars and clubs showed that the capital's "exceptionality" had ended.
A symbolic blow because it exposed the inability of the federal government to maintain security against the cartels, even at its own headquarters.
The fact that this trend is now subsiding and that CdMx is beginning to recover offers hope, at least for the story,
The scope and reasons that explain these new data are beyond the limits of this text.
There are many factors to produce positive results, and surely the good performance of the head of government herself is part of it, but it is clear that the president decided that politically Claudia Sheinbaum would take the credit.
For the mayor of the city, this favorable exposure comes at the most opportune moment.
Her controversial statements about the opinion of the Norwegian company DNV regarding line 12, had been questioned among the critical press, to the extent that some considered the incident as a serious dent in her presidential aspirations.
Tuesday's session restores image and bonuses for that race.
And his good day culminated a few minutes later, in the same morning, when the president, pleased with the exhibition, addressed the issue of succession.
Although he insisted that he would not put his hands on any dolphin and that everything would be decided by a poll, he did not resist a phrase that puts things in relative perspective.
I celebrate the generational change that is coming, he said, and then he tried to clarify: "everyone is younger than me."
But by talking about generational change he may have betrayed himself by revealing more than he would have wanted.
Perhaps because Marcelo Ebrard and Adán Augusto López have a long political career, and despite the fact that the latter was present at the session, the eyes converged on Claudia Sheinbaum.
The paradox is that in reality the three belong to the same generation and one might even wonder if the age difference with López Obrador justifies talking about a generational change.
Perhaps political, but hardly chronological.
By the time of the election they will all be in their sixties.
Marcelo Ebrard is six years younger than the president and Adán Augusto López, ten years.
And to the surprise of those who see his biographical file for the first time, Sheinbaum is one year older than Adán Augusto and just nine years younger than the president.
A matter of perceptions, which in politics are everything.
For example, the fact that López Obrador is willing not to intervene and assuming that, in effect, he complies, it is impossible to prevent the Morenoite bases from ending up paying for the benefit of the one they consider to be their leader's favorite.
And that will ultimately be a matter of subjective interpretations.
In other words, the battle for the candidacy is not only about winning the political boss's approval, but also the popular perception that he is the implicit favorite.
A long career that will be full of advances and setbacks for each other;
a long marathon in which this Tuesday Claudia Sheinbaum advanced one box.
@jorgezepedap
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