The municipio moved up from #1209 to #1303 on the descending poverty scale, out of 2445 Mexican counties. And it has now joined the glorious ranks of medium poverty places just one rank below low poverty.
In addition, only 64% of the working population now earns less than 2 minimum wages per day (95 pesos), while just 5 years before the report, 82% were in that position. Furthermore, only 23% now live in houses with dirt floors and only 43% of those older than 15, have less than an elementary education.
Beautiful downtown Catemaco has thus become the richest county in Los Tuxtlas, distantly followed by neighbor San Andres Tuxtla at #1107 and really poor neighbor Soteapan at #141.
The local and state governments are fighting almost daily over responsibility for this magnificent achievement since they were published.
Personally I attribute it to my having arrived here and my spending a lot of money on the proverbial wine, women, song and construction projects. A few more benefactors like me, and Catemaco would probably rise another 10 points.
Meanwhile though, I will bet anyone 12 3 pound mojarras, that Catemaco is in the top 1% in the world of number of Christmas light bulbs per inhabitant, (excluding Chinese light bulb factories). Arriving in Catemaco now is almost like entering a “magic village”.
At least until the helpful locals steal the rest of the decorations, which are now disappearing daily from the 1/2 mile stretch before entering downtown. This is obviously an attempt at decreasing the 2 1/2 peso per KW electricity cost for the municipio.
Now that is what I call Christmas esprit!
Reference: CONAPO -Índices de marginación 2005
http://www.conapo.gob.mx/publicaciones/indice2005.htm
