Leftist is surprisingly at home in elite Mexico City borough

MEXICO CITY — Victor Hugo Romo marches past the walled mansions of Las Lomas, surrounded by an entourage. Staffers with clipboards and tablets. Skinny men with brooms and machetes. A handful of residents. More than a few cameras.

“Tree trimmers!” he shouts. And the tree trimmers scurry to a droopy willow, chopping away at branches that threaten power lines.

“Pot-hole patchers!” And their machine spits into a crater in the middle of the street.

Romo is the new borough president in the wealthiest enclave of Mexico City, possibly of all Mexico. He is the first leftist to be elected to the job: Las Lomas, Polanco and the other wealthy neighborhoods of the Miguel Hidalgo borough of western Mexico City had until now been the exclusive purview of right-wing politicians, befitting, presumably, the moneyed classes over which they ruled.

Anger at the way the rightists were running things helped propel Romo into office, turning local politics on its head. Yet Romo, a slight, bearded man of 35, says he sees no contradiction. His party, he said, has become pragmatic and shown it can govern, without forsaking its social roots.

“I don’t represent the left of protest rallies and sit-ins,” Romo said in an interview in the colonial building that houses his offices. He was seated on a shaded terrace, traffic noises in the background, Cuban musician Silvio Rodriguez on the stereo. “We understand our social DNA. But we have injected an additional chromosome.”

An economist by training, Romo has brought an energetic grass-roots activism to some of the most insulated, rarefied and genteel parts of this sprawling capital, to the bemusement and bewilderment of many here.

One day, he roars into a park to help the locals plant bushes. Another day, he sweeps away the law-breaking sidewalk tables belonging to a strip of restaurants. (They’re supposed to be 6 feet from the curb).

Even in its most bountiful barrios, however, Mexico City on a good day is utter chaos. Repairing and mending and tidying up the way Romo does can be like trying to dry a beach. The water just keeps coming.

And so this Mexican Sisyphus plugs holes where he can, punishing zoning violators, righting little wrongs.

His biggest challenge — and the biggest complaint from constituents — involves the runaway construction that is ruining the character of many of these neighborhoods. Skyscrapers sprout up in sections where traffic already chokes to a standstill. Expensive restaurants are slapped on to the facades of historical mansions supposedly protected as architectural treasures.

Polanco, for example, was once a neighborhood of graceful casonas, large, single-family homes, and wide green parks. Most of the homes have been torn down and replaced by fancy apartment buildings; five-star hotels are encroaching on the parks.

It is what pundits here call savage urbanization. And Romo says it can collapse neighborhoods if not checked.

But he has shown himself less than effective on this score, at least so far. Many of the permits for some of the most outsized construction (a 40-story office building on one of the busiest corners of Polanco) were issued by his rightist predecessor, in the waning days of that official’s term.

Nor does it help that the mayor of Mexico City, Miguel Angel Mancera, who outranks borough presidents, is proving to be quite friendly to developers and construction companies; he appointed a building tycoon to the Cabinet position that oversees building permits. This, even though he is from Romo’s leftist Democratic Revolution Party.

Romo vowed to prevent the kinds of loopholes in land-use regulations that allow abuses. Occasionally, he closes an establishment, including, recently, one of the trendiest restaurants in town after customers’ bodyguards and chauffeurs were blocking sidewalks. (The place was allowed to reopen a few days later.)

“I see it very complicated for Romo, for whoever holds the job, whatever the party,” said Monica Señoret, a longtime neighborhood activist who was planting trees with Romo the other day in Polanco’s Lincoln Park. “It would be very hard to be in his shoes.”

Those shoes, though, seem to be moving around Mexico City like the Energizer bunny.

On the tour of Las Lomas, Romo and his crew strode past ornate homes, embassies, designer spas and boutiques with valet parkers. Residents who joined in were wearing jackets and ties or silk blouses. One woman brought along her caramel-colored Brussels griffon.

“Something as easy as trash collection,” Romo tells several Lomas women, pointing to uncollected trash just before the garbage men descend. “They’re doing it today because I’m here.”

“You should come every day,” one of the women tells him.

These are members of Mexico’s elite, citizens unaccustomed to living outside a very comfortable bubble and unused to having to protest for anything they need or want. A handful are committed neighborhood activists, however, and many are giving Romo conditional high marks.

“So far, we are giving him the benefit of the doubt,” said resident Dominique Peralta, who owns a Lomas delicatessen and was along for the tour. “He brings ideas of a very modern city. He receives us, he listens to us, but still we haven’t seen big changes. The buildings keep growing, the illegal businesses keep multiplying.”

Retiree Gerardo Schultz had a similar complaint. He pointed to the street vendors, mostly selling food, who congregate around offices in the middle of residential avenues.

“We expect the new Romo administration to close those illegal offices,” he said. “We expect the new administration to be a support and an ally of the neighborhood.”

Romo spies an uneven, cracked sidewalk, the kind that can cause a pedestrian to trip and break a knee. “Let’s fix it!” he demands to his crew.

If it can’t be repaired on the spot, aides make a note and say they will dispatch properly equipped workers at a future date.

A resident approaches to report a burglary.

“Get me the prosecutor,” Romo calls out. Next thing you know, the city prosecutor is on the other end of a cellphone being handed to the burglary victim.

Romo got into a bit of hot water recently when a magazine that had interviewed him placed billboards all over town with his picture on them. It was criticized as a form of self-promotion that was unseemly and possibly illegal.

Each billboard had the name of the magazine emblazoned above Romo’s face: Radical.

wilkinson@latimes.com