Page 14 - Teste nec

events that provided opportunities for face-to-face communication,
not only between Peñalosa and Guadalajara actors but also between
Guadalajara policy elites themselves. He had breakfast with fifty local
empresarios, lunch with University of Guadalajara faculty members and
other local public opinion leaders, and dinner with the owners and
directors of the main local media companies. As noted by a gdl 2020
leader, “we heard the Bogotá story seven times in three days” (gdl
2020 leader 2, personal interview, 2013). If Peñalosa’s time in Gua-
dalajara was limited to three days, why this emphasis on promoting
face-to-face encounters with other empresarios, the media and public
opinion leaders? To answer this question we need to understand gdl
2020 own interpretation of their sources of power to influence local
policy agendas. As noted by one of their leaders, their power to in-
fluence policy and government agendas in Guadalajara derives from
three main sources: 1) their social and political networks of relation-
ships; 2) their capacity to maintain a low profile as an organization by
giving political trophies of their achievements to local politicians; and
3) their capacity of emphasizing the need of the government to act on
particular urban problems by influencing three types of actors: a) key
politicians and public officials; b) individuals that directly impact the
urbanization process (including real estate developers, bus company
owners etc.); and c) people with “de facto” power, who, they clarify, are
“individuals with the capacity to have an impact in the media and form
public opinion, such as some university professors or people with a
column in a newspaper” (gdl 2020 leader 2, personal interview,
2013). gdl 2020 interpretation of their sources of power suggests
a particular network of actors that goes beyond the public and private
spheres and that they perceive as crucial to introduce new policy agen-
das in the city. It is by understanding these beliefs and vectors of power
that one understands the ways in which the talk as well as the formal
and informal meetings of Enrique Peñalosa in Guadalajara were stra-
tegically organized by gdl 2020 to place their shifting beliefs of how
the city should be transformed in the local government agenda.
As noted above, gdl 2020 considered those individuals with the
power to influence local public opinion as the third most powerful
actors in the city. In fact, during Peñalosa’s visit, Carlos Álvarez del
Castillo, director of El Informador, Guadalajara’s main newspaper, and
a personal friend of one of gdl 2020 leaders, hosted a dinner in his
house where he gathered the owners and directors of the main local
media companies, a committee that normally meets once a month as
Fundación Extra. As noted by a local columnist, “there is no urban
agenda and no political candidate in Guadalajara that does not go
through Fundación Extra first” (gdl 2020 member interview, 2014).
Yet, this association of the local media elites is not just a forum where

NOVOS EStuD. ❙❙ CEBRAP ❙❙ SÃO PAuLO ❙❙ V36.01 ❙❙ 59-75 ❙❙ MARÇO 2017 71

03_montero_dossie_107_p58a75.indd 71 3/31/17 4:59 PM