Alfredo del Mazo Maza, Peña Nieto's Doppelgänger

Milenio published an interview with Alfredo del Mazo Maza , mayor of Huixquilucan de Degollado in Mexico State since 2009, and before that secretary of tourism in Enrique Peña Nieto's government of Mexico State.


Alfredo del Mazo Maza has long been mentioned as Peña Nieto's anointed heir to succeed him as governor of Mexico State, and is many ways a carbon copy of the governor: He is young (35), relatively telegenic, and, most importantly, a third-generation del Mazo, the scion of a political dynasty: both his father and grandfather were governors of Mexico State. 


Regardless, the Milenio story doesn't exactly reveal any new information, and del Mazo engages in the usual platitudes of PRIspeak, though a few comments are telling:

"In the interview, Alfredo del Mazo Mazo practically has the same tone of voice as Peña Nieto, and even his hand movements are similar to those of the head of Mexico State:"

The team that trained Gelboy has trained him equally well: My money is on del Mazo Maza.

Two candidates register to contend for PAN's presidency: One point left out

Gustavo Madero and Cecilia Romero yesterday registered officially to contend for the PAN presidency. The former is a current national senator, and his appearance was a tour de force in that he arrived with a posse of more than 100 prominent supporters, including seventeen PAN senators, and the "moral leader" of the party, Luis H. Álvarez. The latter was until recently head of the INM, the national migration institute, until she was finally fired from her post due to incompetency and failure to curb corruption and abuses in her agency - accusations that harks back years, but was impossible to ignore following the murder of 72 migrants in Tamaulipas. Romero, however, rather than keeping a low profile is heading for an even bigger prize, the PAN presidency. Also of note: She is also a hardcore opponent of any state-level electoral alliance with the PRD.

Two points: 

1) What neither La Jornada nor Milenio mention in their coverage is that Romero is a close ally of the most ultra-right elements of PAN, and is moreover part of El Yunque, an extremist catholic secret society. 

2) The fact that Madero felt compelled to display such a show of force is to me an indication that her candidacy is taken seriously by the more moderate elements in PAN represented by Madero.

As is well known in particularly U.S. politics, displaying incompetence, ideological extremism, or utter stupidity was never a hindrance for postulating for public office; on the contrary, as can be well observed these days, it may even be a plus. The same goes for Cecilia Romero. 

A few points regarding the PRD's level of party institutionalization

Students of the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD), Mexico's only serious leftwing party, tend to coincide on a few things: The party is not "institutionalized," in political science jargon, in that it has not a strong and firm party organization, it does not speak with one relatively common and consistent voice, it does not have clear established and respected internal rules for creating programs, recruiting candidates, and party leaders, and is in general involved in much internal and external turmoil. My main point has long been that the party cannot make up its mind whether to be a partido-moviemiento, or a movement-party of the personalistic kind, or a regular, more traditional party type, and to try to explain why this is so. A visual image might help here: To "storm" the congress dais and block the streets, or to work for gradual reform in congress.

Another clear indicator of whether a party has achieved or is moving toward institutionalization is the relationship it has with its party founder(s): Does the party continue to appear a mere appendage of the founder(s)'s ideas, program, or, to be sure, presidential candidacy? Or, has the party transcended its first leaders in that it does not merely follow his dictates, but has an autonomous program and leadership independent of him ? (thus far, invariably "him" and not "her").

I do not argue that the PRD today is an institutionalized party; its vicious infighting over the candidacy of AMLO vs. Ebrard, which the Mexico State 2011 election is but a mere proxy for, is a telling point here.
But: I do want to make note of one thing. Both Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the PRD's founder and 3-times presidential candidate, and Andrés Manuel Lópes Obrador, his hijo político and 2006 presidential candidate, are both rejecting the PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State. However, the party leadership, under Jésus Ortega, is still following their own line. Ortega dixit: "One will keep in mind these opinions, but the strategy is to continue with the alliances."

In other words, whatever one thinks of the wisdom of the PAN-PRD alliances, I think it is an extremely healthy sign that the PRD is clearly demonstrating that it is no longer blindly following the dictates of AMLO or Cárdenas. I can think of no other PRD leader who has demonstrated a greater degree of autonomy than Jésus Ortega. While merely one step in a (very) long and larger process of party institutionalization, for the PRD's development this is nonetheless quite a leap forward.

For the record: Panistas also have a sense of humor!

A group of young panistas or members of the ruling Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) symbolically "closed" the Government House of the state governor, Emilio González Márquez, distributing stickers with the face of the governor, who is an ultra-conservative and has gained much notoriety for appearing drunk in public, and the slogan, "If you drink, don't govern, " and "PAN, yes - El Yunque, no"
Who ever said the panistas don't have a sense of humor!

More importantly, it is a reflection of what to me seems to be a growing internal PAN divide between more  younger cadres, pro-business yet quite socially liberal, and the ultra-conservative elements in the party linked to the secret catholic society El Yunque. 

Saying 'sorry' is not enough: PAN rejects readmitting Ana Rosa Payán

Speaking of El Yunque: PAN's national executive committee, after nine months of deliberation, yesterday rejected the request by Ana Rosa Payán Cervera to be reincorporated into the party that she left three years ago. 


Payán was twice PAN mayor of Merida, the first-even woman to hold the job, but upon her failure to get PAN's nomination for governor of Yucatán, loudly resigned from the party. In these of PAN-PRD alliances, it is worth recalling that PRD-PT-Convergencia for a moment thought of recruiting Payan as their gubernatorial candidate, but faced massive internal opposition within PRD: Payán, with other prominent panistas such as Manuel Espino, Cecilia Romero and Carlos Abascal Carranza, to just name a few, is a prominent member of El Yunque, and only became mayor of Merida through an alliance with this sinister organization and other local ultra-right outfits and media, and of course the church. 


Yet that did not stop the "radical" PT and Convergencia from throwing the lot with her. Denied the nomination, Payán left the PAN and approached every party imaginable in Yucatán begging to be its nominee; PT and Convergencia jumped on the offer, and Payán ran on their label. It's hard to decide who is the most opportunistic - the ultra-right Payán joining PT and Convergencia, or the latter two, ostensibly left-wing parties, for embracing her. In any event, she finished with barely three percent of the vote. 


Yet despite saying she's sorry - literally - to PAN, they have not forgotten her sharp attacks on her old party in 2007, and its executive committee refused to reincorporate her among its ranks. Even for the nominally catholic PAN, there are, it seems,  limits to forgiveness. 

Schisms also happen on the political right: El Yunque-PAN fight in Guanajuato heats up

Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez renounced as the  Secretario de Gobierno, or secretary of state of Guanajuato's state government, in order to pursue the PAN's nomination to be its candidate for goverrnor.
While leaving government 20 months before the election seem to suggest that Mosqueda Martínez was fired for his ambitions rather than having left voluntarily, this would in itself too noteworthy.
(For instance, on the national level, many may recall how Vicente Fox kicked out then-Secretary of Energy Felipe Calderón for his activism, only to have Calderón return to snatch the nomination ahead of Fox' favorite Santiago Creel).

What is, however, noteworthy is that Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez is a very prominent member of the ultra-right catholic extremist organization El Yunque, and very close to Elías Villegas Torres, the man who has often been signaled as the leader of this secretive organization. Now, Mosqueda Martínez will fight against the PAN party machinery to be its gubernatorial candidate, a party of which he is not even a member: He is a yunquista, not a panista.

Governor of Guanajuato Juan Manuel Oliva has often been accused of being in the hands El Yunque, yet the current affair serves to suggest a schism between more moderate sectors of PAN, and the Yunque.  Oliva's desired heir apparent is his minister of social development, Miguel Márquez, yet he is apparently not too far to the right for the yunquista. Nor, to be sure, is federal Secretary of Health José Ángel Córdova, who has long expressed his desire to enter the fight for the nomination.

The case of Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez seems to me quite interesting for two reasons:
1) It is indicative of the ever-loosening control of Felipe Calderón of PAN, and certainly show should el yunque manage to install Mosqueda as its candidate
2) The PAN-Yunque coalition is in Guanajuato under some serious strain, and a schism might well happen in the local state branch of PAN.

On a national level, just like the U.S. Republican party, who struggle with incorporating their own tea party loonies (without exaggerating this parallel), the Mexican PAN is an uneasy mix of social reactionaries and ultraconservatives, with relatively liberal minded and moderate christian democrats, such as Fox. While the coalition has held up since 1939, more or less, it may not last forever, especially following the wear-and-tear of eight years in government.