A Freewheeling Mayor

'A Social Equilibrium'

It begins Easter week in 2007. The wealthy have fled the city for their condos in Acapulco or their lake houses miles away at oh-so-chic Valle de Bravo. The city has shrunk to its underprivileged core, its street vendors and housekeepers, its poorly paid shopgirls and struggling students.

Showtime for Marcelo Ebrard.

The newly christened mayor, in office for only four months, arrives at Mexico City's Villa Olympica, a relic of the 1968 Games, now transformed into a splishy-splashy, sand-in-your-toes, honest-to-goodness fake beach. Kids who have never seen the ocean are rolling around in 170 tons of sand spread out next to the pool.

Ebrard delivers his urban manifesto.

"We are going to create spaces where the people can have fun, even though there are those who are bothered by what we are doing because they can probably go to other beaches. But this is being done for the majority," he announces. "It is free and we're going to maintain it starting now and throughout the summer, it is for everyone, it's free, it's our philosophy: We all have the right, and we're making it a reality."

Someone places a lei around Ebrard's neck. His hair is coiffed in its usual comb-over -- a "Oaxacan cheese" style, as they say here, because it looks like the lumped, swirled strands of cheese produced in southern Mexico. He sheds his ever-present penny loafers and traipses onto the sand.

He's still wearing his socks.

"That was quintessential Marcelo," Dan Lund, an American who has worked for decades as a pollster in Mexico City, says in a recent interview. "Here's this geeky-looking guy, looking a little like Clark Kent, with the big glasses; and people like him. That awkwardness gives him authenticity. The people who are making fun of him don't get this."

It rains twice that afternoon, but they can't keep the crowds away. Nearly 5,000 people show up at Marcelo's beach, the first of four he opens around the city at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.

The ruling party establishment is not amused. A Mexican congresswoman, María de la Paz Quiñones of the National Action Party, calls for a federal investigation. She wants the sand analyzed. She's certain it's unsanitary and will be a breeding ground for "certain types of worms."

The worms never materialize, and Ebrard shrugs off the complaints.

"I've worked all my life with the press," says Ebrard's wife, Mariagna Prats, who has starred in soaps with names like "Wild Rose," "Angel Face" and "Hearts Pushed to the Limit." "They can destroy creativity. These criticisms of Marcelo are no different."