Cecilia Romero: "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico"

The failed former head of the national migrants institute (INM) and candidate for the national PAN presidency, the ultra-right Cecilia Romero, when asked about likely presidential contenders Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Enrique Peña Nieto, declared, " "I will eliminate the dangers to Mexico".

Spoken like a true yunquista.

Massive show of force in Guerrero: 40,000 show up for Ángel Aguirre's campaign launch

On Sunday, Acapulco was pretty much paralyzed as more than 40,000 sympathizers of Ángel Aguirre's campaign for governor swamped the city, from the three parties PRD, PT and Convergencia that make up the coalition Guerrero nos Une behind Aguirre. It was quite an impressive show of force, and demonstrates that Aguirre, despite having been a priísta until very recently, was a clever choice in order to try to maintain the state for the PRD.

Interesting as always who was there and who was not: Gabino Cué Monteagudo, governor-elect of Oaxaca, Alejandra Barrales, president of the Mexico City Legislative Assembly (ALDF), Luis Walton Aburto, national president of Convergencia, and of course Marcelo Ebrard Casaubon, chief of government of Mexico City.

It is notable how Aguirre seeks to capitalize on the Ebrard connection and if not exactly ride on the coattails, definitely latch on to the extremely popular and highly successful programs initiated by Ebrard and his predecessor Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City, pledging to the crowd to copy Ebrard's programs such as school stipends, uniforms, and supplies; assistance to single mothers; medical assistance for the elderly, and so forth. Ebrard, of course, is equally using the occasion to promote his own candidacy, to seek to catch up on the 5-6 year head-start campaign advantage that AMLO has on him.
Ebrard dixit:

"Ángel Aguirre wants schools to have free uniforms and supplies for all the children of the state. We already did it in Mexico City; we handed over one million two hundred thousand uniforms per year, because all the children are equal. Because of this we are helping him, and we know he is going to honor his promises"

And who was not present? Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I cannot recall the last time AMLO and Ebrard shared a stage, and it will hardly happen in the near future as they are fighting out the battle for the presidential nomination of the left, through proxy wars in above all Mexico State, where AMLO virulently fights against any alliance with the PAN, while Ebrard is strongly backing it. In Guerrero, notably the left is united, and there is no alliance with PAN, which presents its own candidate, former mayo of Taxco Marcos Efrén Parra Gómez, PAN's only stronghold in the state. It would have been a powerful show of unity of the left had AMLO showed up to throw his considerable weight behind Aguirre, yet although he has let it be known that he backs Aguirre's candidacy, he will not campaign for any candidate that is not explicitly his own.

Ricardo Alemán quits El Universal - why?

It took me by surprise to read the title of Ricardo Alemán's colum in El Universal this morning: "Thanks to everyone - goodbye." After more than 3,500 columns and 14 years, Alemán suddenly declared he is out, and gives absolutely no reason why, though he emphasizes it has nothing to do with freedom of expression and is merely a personal decision. 


Alemán has been somewhat of a firebrand for the left. The scorn he has heaped over the PRD in general and AMLO in particular has made him quite a reviled figure for this segment of Mexicans, in particular as his columns has been regularly chock-full of innuendos, wild speculations and outright conspiracy theories. Yet like an old clock that has stopped, occasionally Alemán would hit the bullseye, and he at times wrote critically of the PAN and PRI as well. It certainly was never boring to read his stuff, so by this yardstick he certainly was a successful columnist. Among all the columns and editorials of El Universal, his would usually show up as "most read."


Yet why is he leaving now? Perhaps it is fitting that he leaves no particular reason, allowing for the conspiracy theorists to grab hold. Was it his accusation that PRD's candidate in Baja California Sur is a narco? Did El Universal finally tire of his one-sidedness? I really don't know, but would love any suggestions. 

With all of Mexico's woes, this is the Church's priority: Lock up women

As La Jornada reports, a mere three days after the opening of the new state legislature in Veracruz, the archdiocese of Jalapa, headed by monseñor Hipólito Reyes Larios, asks that the state deputies immediately change the state constitution to throw women who have abortions in jail. 


Despite the increasing violence, drug wars, abuse of immigrants, floods, you name it, in the state of Vera Cruz, the Mexican Catholic Church's main worry is for the state legislature to arrest and throw in jail women - almost invariably poor, indigenous, and illiterate, who can't even afford or don't know about contraceptions because the church has fought against their sales as well as banning sex education - in jail.


It is at this point I am tempted to in person exhort archbishop Hipólito to simply go to hell.

All in the family, part 2: jefe Diego's son

The kidnapping of Diego Fernández de Cevallos, "El Jefe," had one effect on his family: His son David appears a beast of a man, who terrorized and abused his ex wife, and when his father was kidnapped, things have appeared to have gotten even worse: From today's story in La Jornada on the Fernández de Cevallos family and the ex wife of Diego, Ximena Marín-Foucher"

"This woman, bright-eyed but with a sad face, draws a sketch of a violant man, who caused his oldest son to pee in his pants only imagining the cries:

'He is a man who feels nothing. He is very cruel. He will kill dogs just like that. He is always armed, even in the house. Many times, when travelling roads, he would just kill dogs. He is sick' " 

To recall, Diego's ex wife, despite having custody of her children, had them violently taken away by her now ex husband, when he intruded in her apartment with scores of unidentified police. Hers is a horror tale on how far too many women are treated in Mexico, even - or maybe better yet, especially - in the higher layers of Mexican society. Yet even more so, it  also shows how law and order is at times completely in the hands of, and at the disposition of, the politically powerful: David and his father Diego Fernández de Cevallos have a power base in the state of Queretaro, where David apparently was able to push a local judge to come up with a new court order to grant him custody of his children, despite clear evidence that this man is extremely violent and should not have the custody of as much as a hamster.

The dark sides of his father have been long known, such as how he well as his low morals when it comes to engaging in institutional transgressions and blatant conflicts of of interest and, perhaps most clearly when his powerful law firm on many occasions successfully sued the Mexican State and won big money, all  all the same time as Diego Fernández de Cevallos remained a federal senator. 

The story of David, a vicious, mean father who is the son of a prominent politician, abuses of his wife, yet with ease uses his connection to make a judge cough up a verdict favorable to him sounds like a really bad movie plot. I've said it before: In these kind of families, the apple does not fall far from the tree.