"Goodbye, precious pederast": Puebla sends off Mario Marín

Today is the last day of Mario Marín's six-year criminal reign of Puebla.
El Universal reports that banners appeared around Puebla today, with slogans such as "In Puebla, Never More Precious Ones" and "Goodbye, precious pederast," in clear allusion to Marín's protection of pedophiles, leaked in the infamous phone conversations of 2006. I still have not given up the hope that Marín will eventually rot in jail.

Good riddance.

Mexican party politics, as summarized by Jorge Castañeda in one paragraph:

Castañeda dixit:

"PRI defenders invent that everything  was great until 2000 and then everything went bad with the PAN; the PAN says that everything was a mess before 2000, and the PRD say that everything has always been shitty, except when general Cárdenas was president."

AMLO "revelation": Gordillo wanted to negotiate with him ahead of 2006

I know I've heard and even read this on several occasions, so I am not quite sure what the great news value is, yet if nothing else, it is now officially confirmed by AMLO: Ahead of the 2006 election, the all-too-powerful head of the SNTE teachers union, Elba Esther Gordillo, wanted to negotiate with the then-presidential candidate, yet AMLO refused to have a meeting.

On the one hand, it certainly speaks to AMLO's integrity that he refused to negotiate with Gordillo, a person devoid of any ideology but her lust for power, yet at the same time, it is equally well known that Gordillo threw here PANAL party behind Calderón's candidacy, very likely ensuring the victory of the PAN candidate. AMLO, had he negotiated with Gordillo, would likely not be merely the "legitimate president," but the actual president of Mexico.

Aguirre's is a shock victory: PRD-left coalition candidate wins by +13%

The PREP, or the preliminary results program of the Guerrero state electoral institute,  is now 99.3 percent completed, and Ángel Aguirre Rivero is ahead 55.95 to 42.7 for Manuel Añorve Baños.

To his discredit, Manuel Añorve put up a charade merely minutes after the polls closed, where he declared himself a winner.

This is an election with many clear winners - Aguirre, Jesús Ortega, Marcelo Ebrard, campaign chief Jésus Zambrano, DIA coordinator Manuel Camacho, etc - and many losers - Beatriz Paredes, Enrique Peña Nieto, Manlio Fabio Beltrones, Fernando Castro Trenti, and, to be sure, the new president-elect of the PRI, Humberto Moreira.

Yet lest we forget: Despite dire warnings, grounded in real events, of election violence, there were few major disturbances on election day - no murders of campaign activists or violence against voters. Whatever one think of the election results and the candidates: One clear winner is Guerrero democracy.

Ángel Aguirre wins in Guerrero

All pollsters report that Ángel Aguirre's advantage is outside the margin of error; while the counting continues, it is all but certain that the candidate of the left coalition has won the Guerrero gubernatorial elections.

See Consulta Mitofsky, which is projecting Aguirre winner here.

See the PREP where live results are coming in here.

This is an absolutely remarkable comeback for the PRD and the left coalition behind Aguirre, and a stunning defeat for PRI, as well as Enrique Peña Nieto, which had up until relatively recently taken their victory for granted.

For the record: Manuel Añorve Baños has also declared himself the winner....

Last-ditch dirty tricks by PRI: Robocalls and erroneous voting instructions

Yet another fake edition of the La Jornada newspaper appeared this week in Guerrero, where the "front page" called upon voters to mark on the ballot both the party logos for PRD and PAN in order to vote for Aguirre. This, of course, would invalidate the vote itself, as one can only vote for one option - while the PAN candidate declined in favor of the PRD candidate, this came to late to print new election material - which is, of course, the very intent of whoever is behind the fake newspaper.

In addition, the real La Jornada reports of robocalls made in favor of PRI candidate Manuel Añorve Baños, as well as anonymous calls asking people not to leave their house to vote as things are about to "get ugly" in their area.

Dirty tricks to the very end.

While you're waiting for the Guerrero election results....

Here's a great little documentary available freely on youtube, where Mexican writer Paco Taibo II trails the footsteps of Francisco "Pancho" Villa... well worth your time!

In Baja California Sur, the final piece missing in a pathetic opportunistic game of musical chairs

It's very minor news, but quite telling nonetheless: Alonso Germán Castro backs the PRI.

I've written before of the period leading up to the designation of candidates for governor in the upcoming Baja California Sur gubernatorial elections, which will be held just a mere week after those of Guerrero. Now, the final piece of the puzzle, if one may call it such, is complete: The last to join the game of political juggling is Alonso Germán Castro.

Remember him? He was the PAN politician who won his party's gubernatorial nomination. Fast forward a bit: Marcos Covarrubias, until then of PRD and a national deputy, ditches the party to be recruited on the PAN ticket, together with a local party, the PRS. Since this is now a coalition candidate, PAN argues - keen on keeping the far more electable Covarrubias as candidate - the nomination of Germán Castro was thus tossed out.

Now, the once-gubernatorial candidate for PAN just announced he is backing.... the PRI!

I can really think of no other state in Mexico where politicians have so shamelessly jumped from one party to another, as in Baja California Sur. This includes, of course, PRD's former national president, Leonel Cota, who must have been through 5-6 parties by now). 

The utter opportunism in BCS is simply pathetic, where party labels appear to mean absolutely nothing at all. No wonder Mexicans are cynical about their parties.

(Here's a good run-down of the candidates from El Universal)

Mario Marín: Farewell to a criminal, backed to the last by the "new" PRI

It was am embarrassing charade. Although chairs had been set up for more than 10,000 spectators, less than half showed up, with the result that event organizers were scrambling to remove the empty white plastic chairs as outgoing Puebla Governor Mario Marín began his farewell speech. As more and more damning revelations has surfaced, Marín's supporters have steadily dissipated - though not all.

Mario Marín, to recall just a few fun facts, is a protector of pedophiles, someone who has abused his political position for sexual favors, and is a possible ring leader in a human trafficking/pedophile ring. Purely political reasons has prevented him from being thrown in jail; this man is a criminal of the worst kind. As Katia D' Artigues noted in her column today, only a massive spending of close to 200 million pesos on the local media has so far bought their silence and stopped them from pursuing these and many other scandals.

Yet guess who came to offer their respects? Well, not those of the PRI's old guard that one might expect - Raúl Salinas, Roberto Madrazo, even Elba Esther Gordillo, who had all been invited but chose not to attend - but national party leader Beatriz Paredes and Governor Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico State - the faces of the so-called "new" PRI, which ostensibly does not share the authoritarian and vertical features of the old PRI.

Politics is about swallowing camels, yes, and like the production of sausage, it is at times better not to see how it is being done, yet by showing up at an event to honor a criminal like Marin, Paredes and Peña Nieto just dragged themselves a bit closer to the sewer from which scum like Marín originated, taking the "new" PRI with them in the process.

Can INM Salvador Beltrán del Río be trusted to tell the truth?

After a Wikileaks cable informed that U.S. agents had been allowed to interview migrants on Mexican territory using the offices of the national migrants institute, Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM), its current head, Salvador Beltrán del Río, immediately denied this.

Yet Beltrán del Río, who recently took over as head of INM after the hapless Cecilia Romero, found himself in trouble: Not only did Interior Secretary Francisco Blake Mora seem to acknowledge the veracity of the cable by responding that "cooperation" with the U.S. in matters of "insecurity" exists, and that this also may relate to migrants, but Romero herself confirmed outright shortly thereafter that yes, FBI agents had on a least "a dozen" of occasions interrogated migrants in INM offices.

It is hardly a scandal of enormous proportions, but it makes me wonder:
1) Was Beltrán del Río simply not informed yet of this?
2) Or, is Beltrán del Río simply lying through his teeth?

The replacement of Romero by Beltrán del Río sent hopes to many that the INM would finally have a capable head - he has, for one, a law degree from Harvard - yet this is the second time in a very short period his words are put into question: Just a couple of weeks back, he had a spat with the Mexican human rights commission over the actual numbers of migrants kidnapped in Mexico, where INM operates with a much lower figure than other organizations. Unfortunately, a Harvard degree does not exempt him from being asked the question: Can Beltrán del Río be trusted to tell the truth?

TEPJF orders Mexico State electoral institute to

Mexico's highest electoral court, TEPJF, unanimously ordered the Mexico State electoral institute (IEEM) to admit a complaint made by the PAN and PRD against various functionaries of the state, including Governor Enrique Peña Nieto, as well as local state legislators and mayors, for using state resources for personal political advertisements. The IEEM had earlier refused to accept the complaint, arguing it had no jurisdiction, a decision backed by the local electoral court, yet TEPJF clearly saw it otherwise. 

Yesterday, a day later, the head of the IEEM, Jesús Castillo Sandoval, declared that the electoral institute does not follow orders from Peña Nieto's PRI government. Let's hope so. 

Mere days before Guerrero election, AMLO cries "treason" - why?

The timing may certainly seem peculiar, even if it was in response to a current event: Mere days to go before the Guerrero election, after it was known that PAN candidate Marcos Efrén Parra would decline in favor of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, AMLO immediately pronounced that the hastily patched PAN-PRD agreement was "treason" - a term AMLO tends to hurl around at anything he is in discordance with.

Note that the PRD-PAN hardly even agreed to an "alliance" in Guerrero, these intra-party alliances forged elsewhere that AMLO so ardently opposes, yet rather that the PAN candidate would decline in favor of the PRD candidate, asking his voters to cross the ballot for PRD rather than PAN (it is too late to remove Parra from the ballot).

What good does this serve? While it is hardly possible to measure the impact, clearly AMLO's disqualifications do not benefit the Aguirre campaign, but harm it. AMLO, to recall, earlier even noted his support for Aguirre, and while he failed to campaign for him (Aguirre didn't want to sign the "10 commandments" AMLO has obligated candidates elsewhere to agree to, as he simply didn't agree with several of them, such as the cancellation of a major hydroelectric dam project).

Yet AMLO's decision, which can only hurt Aguirre's chances, do follow their own logic: He would rather see a PAN-PRD alliance fail than to be successful, as he has staked pretty much his entire political capital on opposing them.

In the process, he is, of course, running the PRI's errand. The El Universal headline that reported on AMLO's condemnation is very, very telling in this regard: "AMLO and Peña Nieto criticize the Guerrero alliances." Unlikely bedfellows, yet bedfellows all the same.

CSIS Mexico election analysis by George Grayson below par

One may forgive a couple of the inaccuracies in the most recent publication from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) on Mexico, "Hemisphere Focus: Mexico's 2011 Gubernatorial Elections and their Impact on Drug Policy," such as naming PRD's Alejandro Encinas a "Senator" (he is a national deputy) and Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo the party's "leader in the Chamber of Deputies" - that is actually Encinas' job.

Yet where author George Grayson  - a senior scholar on Mexico, yet one who has grown ever more stridently nationalistic, ideological, and contemptuous of the object of his study throughout the years  - truly confounds me is his assertion that in Guerrero, which is holding gubernatorial elections this Sunday,

"The outcome will be a win-win situation for the PRI and Enrique Peña Nieto, who has ties to both top contenders."

Come again? Yes, while it is true Peña Nieto has ties to Aguirre, this is one of the most fought-over elections in recent history, and the Mexico State governor has invested a ton of time and resources behind the Añorve candidacy. A loss for Añorve would be an absolutely brutal blow to both PRI and Peña Nieto, in my opinion.  I really don't get how Grayson (a man whose own biographical entry refers to him as "Mr. Mexico," and who has done "more than 1,000 research trips" to Mexico) can see it otherwise, and certainly not as a "win-win" situtation.

Oaxaca to plant 30 million trees. Gabino Cué delivers.

Via The Mexico Institute, here's finally some English-language of Oaxaca's progressive governor Gabino Cué, published in the Miami Herald:

"There were no computers," he recalled. "We found that the staff payroll didn't match who actually was working. ... The bank statements were out of balance. The state automotive fleet was in terrible shape."On his way out the door, outgoing PRI Gov. Ulises Ruiz installed dozens of loyalists in state jobs with union protection even though they had no jobs to perform, Cue said. Ruiz also offered gifts to key allies, among them the head of the state electoral commission, for unexplained "services rendered."

On the topic of Cué, whose government so far has seem notably intent on delivering on his campaign promises, the governor launched the state's Comité Estatal de Prevención y Combate de Incendios Forestales, or committee to prevent and fight forest fires, and declared that Oaxaca would plant 10 million trees in 2011 - Cué attributed the low figure to unexpected adminsitrative difficulties (see above) - yet that a notable 30 million trees would be planted in 2012. Change to believe in? Hopefully these news will be picked up in English-language media; the state-level initiatives to combat deforestation remains an untold tale (and something I hope to work on the coming fall).

Don Samuel Ruíz, continued

Another excellent obituary of Don Samuel Ruíz Garcia, entitled, "The Inconvenient Bishop," by Salvador García Soto of El Universal:

"Inconvenient to the Mexican Catholic curia, with whom he disagreed in order to lead a life not full of luxury or excess, like most bishops, but by opting for the disadvantaged and not the rich and powerful, to which almost all the Catholic leader are so inclineds. Also uncomfortable to the Vatican and the Roman curia, who tried and was about to remove him from the diocese of San Cristobal in 1993, when Girolamo Prigione, in his crusade against the "rebel or social" bishops, " he poisoned the hierarchies of Roma, who opened a trial and accused him of "excessive politicization."

As the Vatican rushes to lavish praise on  Samuel Ruíz, let's not forget that the upper clergy, in particular in Mexico, absolutely loathed him. What a badge of honor

Guerrero elections: PAN candidate declines in favor of Ángel Aguirre Rivero,

Some notable news from Guerrero: PAN gubernatorial candidate Marcos Efrén Parra announced that he would decline in favor of the left coalition candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero, who most polls have ahead PRI-candidate Manuel Añorve Baños. I am not sure that this is an automatic gain for Aguirre - polls had Aguirre at the exact same percentage, 51 percent to 43, even if Parra would decline. But clearly, for Aguirre and the PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition, this is welcome news.
And I don't think it was merely a "personal decision" of Parra - even though his action was ostensibly due to Aguirre's incorporation of several of his proposals - a migrants institute, and a bank for women - into his platform.

Don Samuel Ruíz: The "miracle" is that he lived to die of natural causes at 86

Don Samuel Ruíz: A wonderful and thoughtful obituary, of sorts, by Laura Carlsen of the CIP Americas Program, that also touches on a most uncomfortable truth, given the onslaught of popes John Paul II and Benedixt XVI on liberation theology and the progressive gains of the Vatican II, of which Samuel Ruíz was a participant: With the most honorable exception of Raul Vera, bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila, how many of the progressive catholics remain in the upper echelons of the church? To me it seems sadly to be very few, given its rightward turn the past two decades or so.

The first "shocker" of 2011: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas does not rule out 2012 bid

It's been argued before: Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, three-time presidential candidate and founder of the PRD, will never bury his ambitions of making himself or his son president of Mexico. He is currently achieving quite a bit of publicity in relation with promoting his new book (which will be reviewed when I get to the other 17 books ahead of it in the stack), and let it be known that he does not rule out a fourth presidential bid. By all means: He is in every right to do so. It is also in every PRD members right to point out, "Thanks, but you had your chance, you had a second chance, you had a third chance, ya basta."

Cárdenas also ended up on the front page of El Universal a few days back with a scathing critique of PRD, which he claimed "not even a miracle could unify" - not even a possible party presidency of his son Lázaro - and he offered a range of critiques of the party's (lack of) organization, its many internal fights, and so on.

While many of the critiques are quite right on target, it begs the question: Why now? Why now, ahead of an ultra-important election for the PRD in Guerrero, with others to come, and as the PRD in Mexico state is making at least some small steps toward reconciliation with the likely Alejandro Encinas candidacy - why did he find it fruitful to launch a full barrage of criticism against the party at this juncture? Many key perredistas as well were clearly unhappy with this onslaught, such as Jesús Zambrano, who retorted that "from above one doesn't always see that clearly how the PRD looks inside," while secretary general Hortensia Aragón suggested he come and take a look at the very real process of organization taking place in the party, which Cárdenas is so dismissive of.  His charge that not even "saints" could unify the PRD, given his still important clout in the party, may even take the form of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

(El Univeral, in this regard, offered a most laudable editorial on the importance of a strong and unified PRD in Mexico)

Cárdenas at the very least seems to be coming to terms that the PRD, as has long been argued, is divided principally in two main blocks or poles, a topic as well of recent scholarly attention.

Yet as always, the criticism seems to me to be chiefly motitaved by his complaint that, in his words, "no one in the PRD listens to my criticism." One the one hand, CC has always rejected that he acted as a caudillo within the party, demanding the final word even if he no longer had official leadership positions, and that he was the party's "moral leader." Yet on the other, when all is said and done, he still expects the party to take his opinions as gospel.

"New" PAN-PRD alliance: Hidalgo

While PAN and PRD allied for the 2010 gubernatorial election in Hidalgo, which their candidate Xóchitl Gálvez are still fighting in court, what is notable about their new alliance is that in 2011 there are no gubernatorial elections in the state, though the heads of 84 municipalities will be elected. Yesterday it was reported that the Hidalgo branch of PAN had unanimously voted in favor of an alliance with PRD in this election as well - as far as I gather, the first time such an alliance has come into being when what is at stake is only municipal elections, and not gubernatorial elections.

Guerrero gubernatorial elections: 7-point lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero

Ahead of next Sunday's election, the campaign to be Guerrero's next governor is drawing to a close.
Today's El Universal reveals a 7-percent lead for Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the candidate of of a coalition of the left over PRI-candiate Mannuel Añorve Baños. This is truly an upset; Guerrero was one of the states, given the misrule of Zeferino Torreblanca, the PRI just a few months ago had chalked up as a very likely win.

As childish as it gets: PRI hurries to steal opponents' campaign name in Nayarit

In Guerrero, the official name of the PRD-PT-Convergencia campaign behind the candidacy of Ángel Aguirre Rivero is "Guerrero nos une," or "Guerrero unifies us."
In Nayarit, which also faces gubernatorial elections this year, a PRD-PAN coalition has for many weeks been using a similar slogan, "Nayarit unifies us," a play on the Guerrero coalition name.

Yet today, just hours before the opposition coalition registered this campaign name officially with Nayarit's electoral authorities, a PRI-Green Party-PANAL coalition registered with this name for their coalition - with the effect that the two principal contenders in Nayarit now have registered with the same name. Keep in mind that the "X (name of state) unifies us" was also the name of the various of the PAN-PRD coalition the past summer. Yet PRI, in what must be one of the most childish acts in the party's history in Nayarit, hurried to snatch away this campaign slogan from PRD-PAN.

This hardly augurs well for the political climate of the upcoming election.

Claudia Corichi García's drunk calling; Amalia García ignores legal deadline

Claudia Corichi García is the daughter of until rather recently governor of Zacatecas, Amalia García Medina. She is a national senator of the PRD, and has past years faced quite a few charges of nepotism, of being utterly unqualfified for a senator (the bar is admittedly low), and of abusing her position for own gains - though she has never been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet her critics found further ammunition this weekend: An intercepted telephone call where Corichi, according to some reports "in a state of inebriation," offers the PRD-PT-Convergencia candidate Ángel Aguirre to send 100 "volunteers." Aguirre responds by stating a desire for "sweets and books" to be handed out.

There are many angles here: It just happens to be that the phone conversation was leaked after a barrage of evidence has surfaced for the active and illegal -and far worse- intermission of other PRI governors, chiefly Enrique Peña Nieto, in the election. It should also be worrisome for Aguirre and his campaign that his phone conversations are obviously tapped, either by PRI directly or certainly by collaborators of the party. Yet in the end it is also an indictment of the morals of Claudia Corichi. Despite the relatively innocuous transgression, her attempted intermission (in return for what?) comes at time when her mother is facing her own, and far more serious, woes: This weekend was the deadline for the former Zacatecas governor to come up with evidence she claimed would fully dispel the many claims of embezzlement she has been facing from the new state administration. Guillermo Huizar, the state comptroller, said his office had not received any documents. That means in practice that the former governor may face legal sanctions in a few weeks' time.

It would be too cheap with a "the apple doesn't fall far" comment here, especially as none of the two - mother or daughter - has actually been convicted of any wrongdoing. Yet Claudia Corichi's drunk calling offering help to the Guerrero candidate certainly does little good for her own reputation or that of her mother.

Fernando Castro Trenti admits he was wrong, then jumps on another stupid claim

To his credit, Senator Fernando Castro Trenti admitted that the PRD activist Guillermo Sánchez Nava, who was nearly beaten to death by presumed PRI thugs in Guerrao, was actually attacked and that it was not faked. He could hardly do anything else: Sánchez Nava's own children publicly presented his medical diagnosis. It was simply idiotic to jump on such a baseless claim to begin with, but fine: He rectifies.

Yet then comes the next claim, worthy of a U.S. tea bagger: A few days ago, "someone" (very likely the Manuel Añorve Baños campaign) had a fake La Jornada newspaper made that proclaimed that the PRD candidate admitted he lost a recent gubernatorial debate. It was all made up; the newspaper was fake.

Yet the good senator, rather than having learned from postulating outrageous claims he can't back up, mistakes, now claims, counter intuitively and without a shred of evidence, that the fake paper was actually made by the PRD. Will an apology be forthcoming this time as well?

Baja California Sur elections: Marcos Covarrubias, born-again panista

It is not illegal to change parties, and often there are quite legitimate reasons for it - e.g. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas departure from the PRI in the 1980s stemmed from the party's rightward shift. Other times, candidates themselves do change ideologically - they move to the political left or right, and sometimes do no longer "fit" with their old party. It happens. However, most times in Mexico the decision by a candidate to leave his or her party appears unfortunately motivated by purely opportunistic motivations, such as having lost a party primary for an elected position.

In Baja California Sur, the case of Marcos Covarrubias appears decidedly a case of the latter. While Covarrubias has every right to ditch his old party the PRD in favor of becoming the PAN's candidate for government, his new-found enthusiasm for PAN and president Calderón is reaching new levels: In a debate with the other main candidates for governor -  Ricardo Barroso (PRI-PVEM), Luis Armando Díaz (PRD-PT), and Blanca Meza (of Nueva Alianza, the party that uses children as vote getters) - Covarrubias spent most of the alloted time extolling the virtues of federal programs and glorifying Calderón, who he argued has the highest approval rating in Baja California Sur. The audience responded by booing.

Yes, changing party is one thing - but really, how can one expect to be taken seriously - indeed, that one's new "convictions" truly are such - when one candidate can so easily jump across to an opposition party and assume, line, hook, and singer, all that it parties stand for, from almost literally one day to another?

It certainly helps explain the huge distrust Mexicans exhibit toward their parties, and that so many feel that politicians have very little convictions beyond furthering their own personal ambitions.
People like Marcos Covarrubias - yes, he, too, bailed the PRD just when he failed to become its candidate a few weeks back - certainly contribute to these sentiments.

Joaquín López-Dóriga: Taking sides or sloppy reporting?

As has been well covered in the media, the PRD has complained about two seemingly blatant breaches of electoral - and penal - law in Guerrero: One is the interception of a semi trailer packed with food handouts bearing the imprint of the Mexico State social agency DIF; the other is the fake edition of the newspaper La Jornada that proclaimed that the PRD candidate had lost the gubernatorial debate.

Yet reading Joaquín López-Dóriga's column today in Milenio is like looking into a distorted parallel universe: He gets it completely backwards. To quote the veteran reporter,

"This is how it is going to be? The dirty campaigns in Guerrero at the limits. Some are making fake handouts from the DIF in Mexico State, and others are publishing an apocryphal edition of the newspaper La Jornada - Guerrero with a front page that says the PRD candidate won the debate."

Is this really how it went, López-Dóriga? On what grounds to you claim the handouts were faked? And why do you write that the fake newspaper gave the victory to the PRD candidate, when it actually said that the PRD candidate lost the debate, and thus obviously was made by the PRI and not the PRD?

Sloppy reporting - or has Joaquín López-Dóriga now simply thrown his lot openly with the PRI?

AMLO and democracy: So much for listening to the "people."

Milenio reports that AMLO has instructed Encinas to reject an alliance with PAN even if the scheduled poll conducted among party members support it.

I'll let AMLO's attitudes toward democracy, respect for Encinas and the decisions of his party, as well as that of the party base, speak for themselves.

"One can see that you are from Queretaro," "the laziness of campesinos"

A throwback to the language of an era that presumably had passed a long time ago, yet seemingly not.

Eduardo Tomás Nava Bolaños is a national senator from PAN, representing Queretaro state.
In a meeting held in the senate with Francisco Mayorga Castañeda, the secretary of agriculture, where Mayorga discussed some setbacks in the PROCAMPO agricultural program, Senator Nava Bolaños shared his intimate knowledge of the Mexican countryside by arguing that the campesinos are struggling not because of lack of resources, but because they are, quote, "lazy." Nava Bolaños dixit:

"Head out to the ejidos, to the zones of production, and see the abundance of land, yet the señor is sitting in his house and no one is working on the plot. Don't blame the federal government for the laziness of the campesinos."

That's right, senator - nevermind that in some estimates 60 percent of migrants who made it to the United States are campesinos who have fled the countryside because they can not survive on the income they get from working their land - they really are just lazy!

The best reply came from Senator Francisco Javier Berganza, of Convergencia:
"Oh senator, one notes that you are from Queretaro."

For real this time? Encinas would accept PAN alliance in Mexico State

There's been a lot of back and forth regarding the willingness of lack thereof of Alejandro Encinas to accept an alliance with PAN should a consulta popular or vote among both parties' members support it.

Yet in a meeting with Nueva Izquierda, the social-democratic and largest faction of the PRD from which its national president hails from, Encinas declared he would accept an alliance with PAN if the people wants so.

That is pretty important news, and vastly more significant  than the PT's public refusal, also announced  yesterday, to engage in any alliance with the PAN; this "Workers Party," duly in quotation marks, will join the alliance if Encinas does so.

(and a side note: El Universal reported the first story, while La Jornada only reported the second...)

More on Peña Nieto's trailer

The trailer intercepted in Guerrero chock full of foodstuff handouts with the logo of the DIF agency of Mexico State, was apparently found at the house of a PANAL teacher. The PANAL-PRI alliance certainly seems fully sealed even in Mexico State, where SNTE leader Elba Esther Gordillo has thrown her lot quite openly with Governor Enrique Peña Nieto.

Adriana Rico García, head of the DIF in Mexico State, rejected that the food came from her state, yet the PRD national leader Jesús Ortega showed the boxes to reporters, clearly embossed with the DIF and Mexico State logo.

Image from El Universal

Left alliance in Michoacán sealed

Much water will flow under the bridge until the November elections in Michoacán, where the state will elect a new governor, 113 municipal heads, and 40 local deputies, yet the left - the PRD, and its less-than-reliable partners the PT and Convergencia did agree to field a common candidate, national PRD leader Jesús Ortega announced yesterday in the state capital of Morelia.

The Gordillo joke was real: "Mama, vote for Nueva Alianza"

See the image for yourself:

Yes, more news on how PANAL is subverting democracy in Mexico State: The party of Elba Esther Gordillo and her SNTE union has engaged in the same nefarious behavior there as in Baja California Sur, handing out election material to children and school supplies embossed with the PANAL logo, including a note that reads, and I am not kidding this time, "Mama, get [a] 10 [points]. this July 5, vote for PANAL"

It gets better: SNTE has even made the children fold and prepare election material! They have also brought home coupons asking their parents to buy goods and food products benefiting PANAL.

SNTE and PANAL have gone too far: The party may and should lose its registry. As for the SNTE union: When will anyone dare to take on these hacks?

Añorve campaign repeats dirty tricks from last campaign: Fake newspapers

When Manuel Añorve ran for mayor of Acapulco in 2008, his supporters produced a fake version of the newspaper El Sur, where the front page declared in bold, "Walton recognizes the triumph of Añorve."

Now it seems they've done it again: Today's regional La Jornada edition had the following image:

The headline state, "Ángel Aguirre lose the debate," referring to the debate held the night before between Aguirre and Añorve, the two front runners to be the next governor of Guerrero.
The problem: The newspaper is fake, yet was distributed, in real-looking newsprint, to thousands of homes as well as newspaper stand, reportedly by Añorve activists.

The PRI campaign appears increasingly desperate as its once-safe Guerrero victory has turned into a very probable defeat, and a victory for Aguirre. They have a more than 8-decades long history of subverting democracy in Mexico; expect them to pull out many more dirty tricks before the election the end of this month.

"Daddy, if you love me vote for Elba Esther." More fallout from SNTE/PANAL scandal as dissidents speak out

Dissidents from the SNTE teacher union opposed to the dictatorial rule of Elba Esther Gordillo appear to increasingly speak out against the outrageous practices of Gordillo's troops. In one case, in Mexico State, teacher Pedro Ramírez Vázquez of the dissident (anti-Gordillo) Section 36 of SNTE said that in some schools, teachers have asked the young pupils to bring them a copy of their parents voting card (!)

What is next? Instructing the kids to tell their parents, "Daddy, if you really love me, can you please vote for PANAL?"

New rule: If you want to be president, you can't be afraid of Elba Esther Gordillo

Senators of all political stripes demand that the Education ministry (SEP), headed by Alonso Lujambio, take action against the outrageous action of Elba Esther Gordillo's SNTE union, which has handed out electoral material to children in primary and secondary schools, and solicited private data from them and their parents.

Even PAN senators such as Ricardo García Cervantes accuse education secretary Lujambio of not having the guts to take on the all-powerful Gordillo. Note that Lujambio has on more than one occasion hinted at his desire to be president of Mexico. In this regard, standing up, for just once in his career, to Gordillo would be a first positive step toward his PAN nomination

Martín Esparza (SME) in the House, "Economist of the Year" and accusations of illicit enrichment

Martín Esparza went to the Chamber of Deputies to demand the creation of a new company to replace the now-extinct Luz y Fuerza, a state company whose business has been taken over by another state company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). Esparza's union has in the past months achieved notoriety by attacking and destroying CFE installations, as well as physically and verbally harassing the state workers of CFE.

In the Chamber, however, Esparza faced direct accusations of "scandalous and offensive" illicit enrichment, in the words of PAN national deputy Ivideliza Reyes who responded to Esparza's intervention:

"We should give Martin Esparza the award of Economist of theYEar, as on a payroll salary of 335.26 pesos per day, or 10057 each month or 122,370 per year, he has a ranch, called Los Encinas, of 37.5 hecaters, located in Juandhó, Hidalgo, that features a charro, stables, horses from Europe, breeding place for roosters, and facilities for parties...

"Martin, how dare you ask your union members to vote for you, how dare you to ask them to re-elect you every time, and how dare you come to this Chamber to demand that they create a new company for you? Why do you continue to enrich yourselff? Why do you keep stealing from Mexico?" 

Ouch. Reyes also claimed Esparza owns two more properties in the exclusive Quinta San Francisco neighborhood.Dirty, baseless accusations or an accurate description of Esparza's patrimonio? Esparza didn't respond directly but alluded to a lawsuit against Reyes. We'll see.

Ever dirtier in Guerrero: Trailer full with hand-outs intercepted from Mexico State

In Guerrero, the left coalition Guerrero Nos Une, behind the candidacy of Ángel Aguirre Rivero, revealed that they had intercepted a full semi trailer in Acapulco loaded with food hand outs, with markings alluding to the Mexico State DIF, and also including electoral material from Elba Esther Gordillo's Panal party.

Note that the PRD recently denounced several governors, including Enrique Peña Nieto, for interfering in the election with trinkets and handouts. Here is what appears to be hard evidence for the accusations.

(From Milenio)

Finally, an IFE ruling against Peña Nieto: Used public funds for own gain

It was long in coming: A ruling by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) in disfavor of Enrique Peña Nieto. As has been noted here at other occasions, IFE in the past year has very rarely offered any decision against the Mexico State Governor, yet now the institute accepted as legitimate a complaint by PAN that Peña Nieto, in relation with his 5th Informe or State of the State, used public funds for a systematic diffusion of TV ads promoting his personae, as Peña Nieto took the liberty of airing these "spots" not just in Mexico State, but all over the country - all at taxpayers' expense.

While this is illegal, IFE as of yet does not have any means of sanctioning Peña Nieto - the nature of the case was a first - but sent the case over to the Mexico State comptroller.

Of note: IFE councilors (three more still need to be appointed) Marco Antonio Baños and Francisco Guerrero voted against, while Alfredo Figueroa, Macarita Elizondo, Benito Nacif, and Leonardo Valdés, the IFE president, voted in favor of PAN's complaint.

SME inching ever closer to PRI and Enrique Peña Nieto

The Mexican syndicate of electricians (SME) is moving ever closer to the PRI camp. Despite the tolerance that Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has shown toward their countless demonstrations and outright thuggery in Mexico City, many reports indicate that the union is trying to sell itself to the next/highest bidder.

Secretary General Martín Esparza announced that SME will be backed by a SNTE section from PRI-run Coahuila state in its next march, and that 80 PRI national deputies belonging to the  Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC) are backing their demand for a new electricity company in Mexico City, to replace the state Luz y Fuerza company that was dissolved by the federal government last year.

In addition, Esparza said the SME would also march toward the governor palace in Mexico State, where a majority of the SME members come from, to demand that Peña Nieto backs them.

How quickly Esparza and SME forgot about all the assistance and support from various leftwing and social organizations, as well as the city government itself, in Mexico City. Millions of inhabitants saw their travel interrupted from the many marches the SME held the past months, and voices called on Ebrard to say enough is enough. With the seeming decision of SME to jump in bed with the PRI, I wonder what Ebrard actually gained from the permissive attitudes toward the SME the past year.

A damning indictment of education in Mexico and the SNTE teachers union

There might be lies, damned lies, and then statistics, but nevertheless: These figures mean something.
Despite the incentive of a salary hike ranging from 20 to 150 percent of their basic salary, only 32 percent of teachers in primary and secondary education agreed to take an evaluation test of their skills.

According to the ministry of education (SEP), out of 1,156,506 teachers in the country, only 635,051 showed any interest in taking the evaluative test. And of the latter group, only 377,460 actually followed through.

The SNTE, the teacher union led by president-for-life Elba Esther Gordillo, has fought tooth and nail against most any form of evaluative mechanism of Mexico's teachers. Note that the evaluation mentioned was moreover wholly voluntary, yet with a significant monetary bonus: 68 percent still refused to take it.

El Universal also informs us that SNTE didn't respond to a a request for comments. Fair enough: How does one rationalize away these statistics?

In Oaxaca, Governor Gabino Cué sticks to his promise and proposes constitutional changes

Gabino Cué appears to be a man of his word as newly installed governor of Oaxaca: It was just announced that he has sent 75 proposed changes to the state constitution, which notably includes the mechanism of a recall referendum, as well as allowing for referendums. These will need 28 votes to pass; as his broad PAN-PRD-PT-Convergencia coalition only has 23 seats, some opposition support is necessary.

Nayarit PAN-PRD alliance officially registered

While the battle over a possible PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State will rage on for the coming weeks, in Nayarit the PRD and PAN agreed to officially register their electoral alliance with the state electoral institute. The coalition's name is "Nayarit nos une," and will dispute the governorships, 20 mayoralties, 30 local legislative seats, and 138 local governing councils at play.
Likely the candidate will be a PRD member, but it is entirely open whether it will be Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo or Martha Elena García Gómez, both national deputies; the former a lifelong activist on the left, the latter the wife of a former governor who until recently was a panista.

Elba Ester Gordillo's SNTE-PANAL stoops to new low: Get them while they're young

It really is quite a scandal, and should have some serious repercussions: The party PANAL, an electoral outfit based in the SNTE teacher's union that came into being when Gordillo was kicked out of the PRI and brought her PRI-affiliated teacher groups with her, has seemingly engaged in a blatant breach of electoral law in Baja California Sur - as well as crossing any remaining moral boundary - by handing out, through its SNTE cadres, school material for children at the primary level that included logos of PANAL and in Kim Il-Sung-style exalted Gordillo's party - all with the benediction of teachers and the administration of the schools.

Baja Calfornia Sur is having elections in a few weeks time, and what better way to get to voters than to hand out election material to children - most likely financed by taxpayers - so that they can bring it home to mom and dad and tell them how great PANAL is? Well, there is another one: Include a little note that asks for their name, last name, street, house number, municipality, state, borough, area code, phone number, and email, or that of "one of their parents."

Even the most  cursory glance at PANAL's actions makes it obvious that it violates not only electoral law, but also Mexico's legal code.

Jesús Ortega, national president of the PRD, argued PANAL should lose its national registry as party.
Manuel Espino, former PAN leader, condemned the use of primary schools for electoral proselytizing; current PAN leader Gustavo Madero echoed Ortega's call for PANAL to lose its official registry.

Let's not forget as well that the party is violating any right of the children to privacy and protection of personal data, even potentially putting their lives and those of their parents in danger

President of the federal electoral institute (IFE), Leonardo Valdés, said IFE would seek to corraborate the information before deciding what to do. Let's hope they act fast: The actions of PANAL, and SNTE, must have consequences, if the law is to appear to have any weight and value at all.

Could one also be allowed to hope, just for a moment, that the increasing calls for leader-for-life of SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo to renounce her position might actually be heeded?

More on dirty deeds in Guanajuato: Even dirtier than imagined

The Guanajuato state government earlier faced harsh criticism after a public audit revealed that Governor Juan Manuel Oliva had spent two million pesos to buy foodstuffs with public money, to be distributed by the state, from the mother of his son-in-law.

It gets worse: It has now been revealed that the pious governor - the same who has in recent days issued blatantly unconstitutional calls to reintroduce religious education in the schools to instill "principles and values" could use a further refresher course on ethics himself, not to mention laws on corruption and conflicts of interests.

The new revelation:  The state government has spent at least 80 million pesos purchasing foodstuffs from  a company belonging to the daughter-in-law of Elías Villegas Torres, the regional leader for the ultra catholic extremist secret society El Yunque. The company, mind you, was created only four months after the coming to power of Oliva in late 2006, yet managed to beat out well-established competitors for contracts to supplying the state's DIF, which the current investigation has revealed as something close to a snake pit of crooks.

As for "principles and values," at least the way most decent citizens recognize them, they appear increasingly absent from the state government of Governor Juan Manuel Oliva.

Spoken like a true yunquista: Guanajuato governor wants "religious education" in the schools

Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva, following up on a "proposal" from the archbishop of León, declared he was in favor of "analyzing" whether to reintroduce "religious education" in the schools in Guanajuato.

According to Oliva, who is a member of the extremist catholic secret El Yunque society:
"I am a believer that parents should choose the education for their children, and because of this right that they have, we will need to consider a request of this nature." Oliva also added that even though the secular state remains "protected," this does not imply living in a society that is "absent of principles and values."

Where does one start... for one, to even call it "religious education" is disingenuous. What Oliva wants is to indoctrinate the children with the catholic gospel, period - no need pretending. And exactly whose parents are demanding it? Yet even more fundamentally still: It is utterly pathetic to hear the old canard of these believers in invisible friends chime in on "principles and values." Does not teaching catholicism truly mean not teaching "principles and values"? Does this religion really have a monopoly on teaching children good "principles and values"? Unfortunately, this is what ignoramuses like Oliva believe in - that absent the (highly selective, mind you) teaching of bronze-age scriptures, students will simply not learn the good values and principles Olivia is obliquely referring to.

Is it truly so that the more one teach catholic values, the better human beings the students will come out?  Is it truly so that in societies that do not teach religion in this manner in school - Scandinavia, most Western European countries - its students turn out to have less "principles and values" than those who are indoctrinated in catholic values?  Let's put it this way: Quite a few scientific studies do show a clear correlation with church attendance/religiosity, and "social trust" and crime rates. Unfortunately for Oliva, the relationship runs in the other direction: The less religious a society is - and the less religious its education system is - the better off a society is.

And lest we forget: Guanajuato is one of the states in Mexico with the highest rates of teen pregnancy. Guess what state does not teach any sex education in the schools?

The great John Ross is dead

I just saw the sad news that John Ross died this very morning, at age 73, due to liver cancer.

I was by coincidence just reading his absolutely amazing book of Mexico City, El Monstruo, which only came out in 2009. It is a great read, even if you have not lived there for a couple of decades like him.

Here is a wonderful obituary of a most extraordinary man.

Nayarit elections and the party Convergencia: "We will only join winner"

Perhaps not verbatim, but pretty close: The party Convergencia in Nayarit said it would only join a coalition of PAN and PRD if the candidate proposed was the one ahead in the polls.

Everybody loves a winner, but especially Convergencia. That said, expect Convergencia in the end to line up behind thecandidacy of former PRI, then PRD, then PAN, then whatever party she can use for her gain, politician Martha Elena García, now a federal deputy, and wife of a former governor of the state.

PRI and the Great Lie: Guillermo Sánchez Nava, near death, faked it!

The PRI is certainly on a roll these days: Just when you think its standards couldn't sink any further, Senator Fernando Castro Trenti demanded evidence that Guillermo Sánchez Nava, who went in a coma after being attacked by most likely PRI supporters, claiming amazingly that the PRD campaign "put up a farce," meaning that the PRD somehow arranged for the attack on Sánchez Nava themselves. Wow.

Note that the PRI senator demanded "evidence" that the PRD activist was actually hurt; yesterday, his sons responded to this pathetic call by presenting his medical diagnosis from the hospital: traumatic head injury.

Will that suffice, Castro?

Jésus Ortega, national PRD president, condemned Senator Castro for his "absolute insensitivity and total loss of humanity." I think Ortega is too kind.

Ortega also denounced governors Enrique Peña (Mexico State), Egidio Torre (Tamaulipas), Ivonne Ortega (Yucatán) and Ney González (Nayarit) for interfering in the election.

Mariano González Zarur becomes Tlaxcala governor; the worst of PRI resurfaces from the sewer

Mariano González Zarur's assumption as governor of Tlaxcala Saturday truly brought out the best and the worst of the PRI - representatives of the latter included highly discredited ex-governors Roberto Madrazo and Ulises Ruiz, as well as soon-to-be former governor, the ill-famed protector of pederasts, Mario Marín of Puebla - a man who belongs in a federal prison rather than as an invited (presumably) guest to a gubernatorial inauguration ceremon

The state was wrested from the PAN, following the six-year rule of Héctor Israel Ortiz Ortiz. González Zarur promised a thorough house cleaning of the former state administration; notably, in the inauguration ceremony, the eight chairs set aside for PAN's state deputies were empty.

PRD national leadership organs to be renewed March 19

This weekend's meeting of the PRD's national council decided as expected that the party's key organs - its  presidency, secretary general and secretariat, as well as its national political commission and a couple of autonomous party commissions. The council meeting was chiefly a formality; an upcoming meeting in mid-February will address the contentious issue of the PRD's possible electoral alliance with the PAN in 2-3 state elections in 2011, most importantly in Mexico State.

While Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, son of Cuauhtémoc, was prominently presented as a possible "unity candidate" to head the party the next three years, LCB has evolved into the sphinx-like character of his father, opting to remain silent virtually until the very end right before any decision will have to be made - that is, he has not expressed interest for the presidency, nor rejected it.

Regardless: Ahead of two crucial state elections - Guerrero and Baja California Sur - the PRD is wisely doing all it can to maintain a modicum of unity. Even Dolores Padierna argued for a "consensus candidate" - which presumably would mean that she the extremely controversial and tainted leader of the IDN faction has dropped her own candidacy.

Backlash against Oliva's attempt to reintroduce catholic indoctrination in schools

The foolish attempt by Governor Juan Manuel Oliva of Guanajuato to reintroduce, absent since the Revolution, catholic indoctrination in nominally secular state schools, met with a barrage of criticism: Legislators from not only the left as well as the PRI, but notably also the PAN, condemned Oliva's open disregard for the Mexican constitution, which does not allow for religious indoctrination in the schools.

Most stridently, PRD Senator Graco Ramírez and PRI national deputy Alfonso Navarrete Prida warned that should Oliva follow through on his plan, one response might be an impeachment trial in Congress for conspiring against the Mexican constitution. Let's see how far Oliva is willing to go with his neo-cristero crusade simulacrum.

Interview with Ángel Aguirre Rivero, ahead in polls for governor of Guerrero

Against the predictions of most political observers, Ángel Aguirre Rivero is seemingly ahead in the polls by a few percentage points, but ahead nonetheless, to be the next governor of Guerrero.

Here's a useful El Universal interview where he discusses his very recent past in the PRI, as well as how he regards himself ideologically: Of the moderate left.

Of note: He has subscribed to a long-time demand from the left to push for a new state constitution that would, significantly, include the mechanism of a recall referendum. Given the excessive length of Mexican governors' terms - most sit six years - I think this is a mechanism certainly worth considering.

(here's an interview with his main opponent,  Manuel Añorve Baños)

Why PAN's party characteristics speak against Josefina Vázquez Mota 2012

Josefina Vázquez Mota would be a terrific candidate for PAN in 2012. Yet as Jorge Zepeda Patterson in an excellent column today argues, the PAN's own history and characteristics speak against her candidacy, and primarily because her name is Josefina and not José. A couple of cases in point

* PAN, despite its 72-year long history, has never had a woman governor
* PAN, despite its 72-year long history, has never had a woman party leader

And not to forget: In Calderón's government, of the 21 most important ministries and secretariats, only two are held by women.

PAN has still a very long way to grow off its born-with disease: Misogyny.

PRD-PT warn against arrival of "shock troops" in Baja California Sur gubernatorial election

Members of the alliance Sudcalifornia para Todos - the parties PRD and PT - warned against the arrival of "shock groups" in Baja California Sur ahead of the state's Feb. 6 gubernatorial election.

While we only have the assertions of mayoral candidates  Ricardo Gerardo Higuera and Antonio Agúndez Montaño that outside groups are coming to BCS to create havoc in the state, place, the recent violent events in Guerrero ahead of that state's election should certainly put one on alert that something similar might happen elsewhere.

Surreal development in Guerrero campaign: PRI admits attack, then backtracks

A most extraordinary development in the Guerrero gubernatorial campaign:

Ernesto Vélez Memije is a member of Manuel Añorve Baños' campaign to be governor of Guerrero. Following the brutal attack that left a key PRD member of the opposing campaign of Ángel Aguirre Rivero in a coma, Vélez appeared on television and admitted that the attackers were priístas, but alleged that the PRD member, Guillermo Sánchez Nava, had actually "provoked" the attackers.

(PRD's campaign manager, Jesús Zambrano, has presented what he argues is a leaked PRI plan to use violence to destabilize Guerrero and suppress vote participation ahead of the elections)

Sánchez Nava, to recall, caught a group of apparent PRI sympathizers tearing down election material for Aguirre; when he photographed them, they beat him unconscious.

The interview as such was extremely important, even though Vélez' main point was in essence "Yes, but he made us do it, and it is really his fault."

Then happened the strangest thing. Vélez later the same day obviously regretted what he said, and now argued that Mario Moreno Arcos, a PRD federal deputy, had enticed him to admit the PRI attack, offering him a position in a future Aguirre cabinet. Beatriz Paredes Rangel, the national PRI leader, to her discredit also went on the offensive to deny that the attackers were from the PRI.

This case stinks to heaven. It seems so utterly clear that Vélez is lying - the gist of the interview was an attack on the PRD - with his claim that he was pressured/bribed to say what he did. At the very least, it would mean that he accepted the bribe, then regretted - hardly something that speaks well of him.
But again: The interview was above all an attack on the PRD, and it seems clear that higher ups pushed him to come up with this pretty crazy and absolutely unbelievable cover story.

The worst part:

How can Beatriz Paredes Rangel, of whom one might expect more dignified behavior, subscribe to what is obviously an outright lie, and a poor one at that? Note that new PRI president Humberto Moreira has kept his mouth pretty much tightly shut; his handling of this, his first crisis as PRD national leader, speaks very poorly of his judgment, while his failure to clearly and immediately condemn the political violence speaks ill of his moral backbone.

Spoken like a true yunquista: Guanajuato governor wants "religious education" in the schools

Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva, following up on a "proposal" from the archbishop of León, declared he was in favor of "analyzing" whether to reintroduce "religious education" in the schools in Guanajuato.

According to Oliva, who is a member of the extremist catholic secret El Yunque society:
"I am a believer that parents should choose the education for their children, and because of this right that they have, we will need to consider a request of this nature." Oliva also added that even though the secular state remains "protected," this does not imply living in a society that is "absent of principles and values."

Where does one start... for one, to even call it "religious education" is disingenuous. What Oliva wants is to indoctrinate the children with the catholic gospel, period - no need pretending. And exactly whose parents are demanding it? Yet even more fundamentally still: It is utterly pathetic to hear the old canard of these believers in invisible friends chime in on "principles and values." Does not teaching catholicism truly mean not teaching "principles and values"? Does this religion really have a monopoly on teaching children good "principles and values"? Unfortunately, this is what ignoramuses like Oliva believe in - that absent the (highly selective, mind you) teaching of bronze-age scriptures, students will simply not learn the good values and principles Olivia is obliquely referring to.

Is it truly so that the more one teach catholic values, the better human beings the students will come out?  Is it truly so that in societies that do not teach religion in this manner in school - Scandinavia, most Western European countries - its students turn out to have less "principles and values" than those who are indoctrinated in catholic values, say e.g. in conservative regions in southern Italy? Let's put it this way: Quite a few scientific studies do show a clear correlation with church attendance/religiosity, and "social trust" and crime rates. Unfortunately for Oliva, the relationship runs in the other direction: The less religious a society is - and the less religious its education system is - the better off a society is.

And lest we forget: Guanajuato is one of the states in Mexico with the absolute (and relative) higher number of teen pregnancy, as well as rapes and abuses of women. Guess what state does not teach any sex education in the schools, thanks to pressure from the Catholic Church?

If Oliva is truly interested in inculcating good "principles and values" in Guanajuato, religious education in general, and the pernicious teachings of of the Catholic Church in particular, much be lessened, not strengthened.

Step forward toward PAN-PRD alliance in Coahuila

PAN and the PRD are having direct conversations these days regarding a possible electoral alliance in Coahuila, the state where now-PRI president Humberto Moreira is seeking to install his brother Rubén Moreira as new governor.

The likely candidate is PAN's Guillermo Anaya Llamas, a national senator for the party. He's earlier had quite a fews spat with the ex-governor, such as when Humberto accused him in 2007 of having ties to the narcos, a charge often repeated but never substantiated with any actual evidence.

The chances of beating Rubén are slim, but they do exist. 

Repugnant behavior from the PRI; silence from the Mexican Michael Steele on Guerrero election events

As Gancho has noted, Humberto Moreira has been quite an act recently; since taking over as head of the PRI, he has seemed eager to make his mark as new party president, though in the process the rambunctious former governor of Coahuila has sounded a bit more than a cocky highschooler on the student board rather than the head of Mexico's largest party.

Yet given his verbosity, you might think he had a word or two to say of the recent disturbing events in Guerrero, where the PRD's representative to the state electoral council was beaten into a bloody pulp, and whose chances of survival are still 50-50.

- A call to calm tempers?
- A call to reject any violence?
- An apology?

No. Rather, Moreira has kept his usually big mouth pretty  much shut. Yet his fellow party members have not, when they rather should have.

* PRI Senator Manlio Fabio Beltrones has called on the PRD to "not exploit the issue politically."
* PRI Senator and Secretary general Jesús Murillo Karam has attacked "opportunistic declarations."


And the kicker: The "Tiempos Mejores para Guerrero" coalition of Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero, which includes the PRI, the Green Party (PVEM) and the teacher party PANAL, suggests that the aggression against the PRD member might have been a set-up orchestrated by the PRD.

This from the "New PRI." After barely a week as party president, could the PRI under Moreira possibly sink any lower?

Yet another IFE resolution revoked by TEPJF, then another

Mexico's highest electoral court, TEPJF, revoked an earlier resolution by the country's electoral institute (IFE) where the Partido del Trabajo (PT) was fined a million pesos for using the following words in a TV ad, while images of Enrique Peña, Carlos Salinas, Felipe Calderón and Elba Esther Gordillo were displayed: "The mafia of power that took over Mexico, responsible for the current national tragedy."
While IFE had found the ad "denigrated" the said public figures, TEPFJ wisely rejected this as being the party's opinion, and thus not denigrating. As has often been noted here: This is hardly the first time TEPJF have rejected IFE resolutions castigating non-PRI parties.

Yet of note: The TEPJF also ordered IFE to relaunch the investigation of a complaint by  PAN against Andrés Manuel López Obrador, where the party accused him of jumping the gun in terms of electioneering before the allowed time frame, after appearing in several TV and radio ads.

The tragicomedy of the PT and Convergencia's conception of democracy

As is known by now, the PRD is likely to arrange an open poll in Mexico State to decide whether the party should go in alliance with the PAN, and who should be its candidate. Given that likely candidate Encinas has endorsed it, all should be fine. Let democracy work. Right?

Well: Then there's the case of the pejista ultra-faked-loyalty to AMLO, Partido del Trabajo and Convergencia, who display a quite particular understanding of democracy. Their respective leaders, Alberto Anaya and Luis Walton, said while the consultation has not yet been set in stone, they would willingly participate in it, but they would not endorse it should the outcome be a "Yes" to a PAN alliance...

Read: "Yes, we'll participate, but only accept the result if we win."

That said, this absurd statement is unfortunately very much in tune with Andrés Manuel López Obrador's own conception of democracy, which little resembles how the most of the world conceives of it.

True face of AMLO's 'left' allies: Convergencia backs PRI in Baja California Sur.

Yet another example of the incessant opportunism of Convergencia, a party that like Partido del Trabajo has ever since 2006 posited itself as "ultra loyal" to AMLO and as a "real" left radical party.

Convergencia was always and will likely always remain, just like the PT, an amazingly opportunist party that will turn its cape to whatever electoral wind it can use to reap any material benefits and advantages for itself. Claim: It has absolutely no ideological or programmatic agenda, and it is not a left-wing party.

Case in point: Baja California Sur, where the Convergencia candidate for governor, Martín Inzunza, decided not to run as a candidate. While AMLO defenders would be quick to point out that AMLO has told his supporters not to vote at all in BCS, given his open opposition to the PRD candidate, Inzunza, however, declined in favor of the nominal arch enemy, the PRI. Don't expect a comment from AMLO on this hypocrisy any time soon.

Carlos Marín calls on Moreira to condemn attack on PRD

Carlos Marín, senior columnist of Milenio, calls upon PRI president Humberto Moreira to condemn the vicious attack that left PRD's representative to the state electoral institute in Guerrero in a coma.

Here's a chance to try to demonstrate that the "New PRI" is a lot different than the "old PRI."
Will Moreira use it?

PRI thugs beat PRD legal representative into a coma in Guerrero

It's getting worse by the day, two weeks ahead of the gubernatorial elections in Guerrero:
Twenty PRI thugs attacked Guillermo Sánchez Nava, the PRD's representative on the state electoral institute of Guerrero, when he photographed  them tearing down electoral material belonging to Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the candidate of  a leftwing coalition opposing that of the PRI-Green Party-PANAL candidate Manuel Añorve Baños.

The PRI thugs were traveling in a truck with plates from Mexico State - run by PRI's Enrique Peña Nieto. Is this the help promised by new PRI president Humberto Moreira and Peña Nieto to do all they can to ensure Añorve's victory?

Note that the response from Efrén Leyva Acevedo, the PRI's leader in the state, was to accuse his opponents of politicizing the occurrence.

While one would think that x-rays of Sánchez Nava's fractured cranium would more than suffice, the PRI leader rather demanded more "evidence" for what had taken place.

Dirty dealings in Guanajuato: Blatant conflict of interest in government purchases

In an audit, the secretariat of public administration in Guajanato issued a damning critique of the state's DIF, or the state's agency for family development, a social assistance association of sorts usually run by the wife of a governor, who may or may not have any qualifications whatsover to handle this job,

Regardless, in Guanajuato the audit found a "lack of probity in the use of public resources," perhaps most notoriously the decision by state governor Juan Manuel Oliva to spend almost two million pesos of tax payer money buying honey, to be distributed by the DIF, from the mother of his son-in-law.
While apparently technically not illegal, to call it a "conflict of interest" would be putting it mildly.

The probe also criticized a range of other aspects of the government's (lack of) transparency and probity in its management of public resources.

Guanajuato is one of the most retrograde states in Mexico, run by a particularly reactionary wing of the PAN, many of whom are members of the ultra-right catholic El Yunque society.

PRD's founder open to alliances - if, and only if, PRD candidates only

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, the PRD's founder and still with a significant presence within the party, said he was open to backing PRD alliances with PAN, though only if PRD candidates were postulated.

A very small opening, but an opening nonetheless, for a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State.

Credit where it's due: Encinas will accept poll on alliance. Will AMLO?

Now it's on the record: In an interview with Joaquín López-Dóriga, Alejandro Encinas notably stated that he would respect the result of a party/alliance vote on whether to go in alliance with PAN or not in Mexico State.
This is quite notable, as it is the first time he has said so openly, but also as AMLO keep repeating at every time he can, acting as if he were the boss of the PRD and not someone who has betrayed the party on numerous occasions the past years, that absolutely no possibility exists of said alliance.

Encinas: "I believe in a democratic process we have to subject to the rules." Indeed.
Yet as events the past four years have demonstrated, this is a concept fully alien to Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO); his acceptance of vote processes, whether we are talking intra-party debates, decisions of PRD's legislative groups, or even general elections, are contingent upon one thing: Whether he won or not.  The possibility of a PRD-PAN alliance being accepted by AMLO, even if such an alliance would be backed in a vote by the party base, are therefore slim to zero.

Of note: Juan Ramón de la Fuente again calls for legalization debate

Juan Ramón de la Fuente, former head of UNAM and secretary of health in the Zedillo administration - and, mind you, a possible "citizen candidate" for president in 2012 - again called for debating legalization of drugs in Mexico.

Luis Felipe Bravo Mena wants to be PAN's gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State

It didn't take long before leaving his job as Calderón's personal secretary, to announcing his desire to be PAN's gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State: Luis Felipe Bravo Mena just made it official. 

I am not sure what to think here, and it's not just because I'm fighting off a rough winter cold that is keeping me down: Bravo Mena is considered far from "center-right," but rather of the hard right; he is moreover identified as a member of the secret conspiratorial ultra-right catholic extremist El Yunque. Does Calderón with this want to say an absolute "no" to an alliance with the PRD, or is it part of an even more sophisticated ploy? He claims that the president had nothing to do with his decision, which is hardly believable.

Note that Bravo Mena also ran in 1993, as did Alejandro Encinas.
Both lost to the PRI candidate.

And what exactly does SME achieve with this?

I just don't get it. Just a few weeks ago, Martín Esparza received the toma de nota from the federal government as secretary general of the SME, recovering its legal status as union. So why keep on vandalizing?

Yesterday, members of the union, which controlled the now-defunct Luz y Fuerza state company that held a near-monopoly on electricity services in Mexico City, attacked the offices of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), which is, mind you, not a private but yet another state company that took over the Luz y Fuerza service in Mexico. The SME members threw around paint and sprayed slogan all over the building, and destroyed two automatic teller machines used by regular Mexico City residents to pay their electricity bills conveniently. Now, because of the idiots in the SME, not only will regular citizens be inconvenienced, but given that CFE is a state-owned company as well, their tax payer money will have to be used to replace the machines destroyed by the SME. What purpose does SME leader Esparza possibly think this serves?

This is worthy of the worst charrismo of the PRI unions, not of a union claiming non-PRI left affiliations. Thugs.

Guns drawn, beating of reporters in Guerrero covering PRI event

A bad omen for the PRI's gubernatorial campaign in Guerrero: A part of the stage set up for the "Better times for Guerrero" candidate Manuel Añorve Baños collapsed, ruining the day as well for prominent guests such as the new leader of the PRI, Humberto Moreira, as well as Governor Enrique Peña Nieto. 


Yet what happened after speaks volumes of the face of the new PRI: The campaign event was in the hands of security personnel from Peña Nieto's Mexico State, including literally hundreds of agents dressed in white guayaberas. Yet when a sound tower collapsed over the audience, which hurt and blooded at least 20 people, Peña Nieto's security force were more busy pushing and beating up reporters trying to take pictures of the accident. One bodyguard pulled a gun on local photographer, while another tore a camera way from the La Jornada correspondent covering the event. 


The personnel then quickly washed away the blood from the pavement, with water and brooms. 


Former PRI governor of the state Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, who was forced out of office after mass public outcry following the infamous Aguas Blancas massacre in 1995, was also in the audience, though pointedly was not mentioned in Añorve's speech.   

A request for assistance from readers of this blog: Oportunidades data

Estimados lectores:
I am currently working on a paper on social spending and crime rates, and am looking for municipal-level quantitative data on federal Oportunidades spending. Would anyone have a clue where these can be found?

Many thanks for any assistance!

aguachileblogger at gmail dot com

Guessing game: Who will be PAN's presidential and gubernatorial candidates?

My guesses:
PAN's eventual presidential candidate: Ernesto Cordero
PAN's eventual gubernatorial candidate in Mexico State: Luis Felipe Bravo Mena.

What are yours?

Cuotas y cuates? Among allies, discontent with Malova cabinet appointments in Sinaloa

The new governor of Sinaloa, Mario López Valdez (Malova), who to recall led a victorious broad coalition that included both the PAN and PRD to end a 8-decade PRI hegemony in Sinaloa, had earlier declared he would not fill the cabinet with cuotas y cuates, or according to party quotes and friendships, yet he is now accused of his allies, such as Lucas Lizárraga (PRD), Jorge Luis Sañudo (PT), Felipe Manzanarez (Convergencia) and Francisco Solano (PAN), of doing just so:


This Friday, his political allies questioned his appointment of Francisco and Rocío Labastida Gómez de la Torre, none other than the sons of his friend and also ally, former PRI governor and presidential candidate Francisco Labastida Ochoa, as coordinator of strategic projects and director of the center of science in Sinaloa, as well as that of Juan Ernesto Millán Pietch, also a son of an ex-governor, Juan Millán Lizárraga, to the plum position as secretary of tourism. 


Perhaps it is more of a preventive measure from his coalition partners than anything else, as many positions remain to be fulfilled, but the criticism appears certainly to have put the new governor on the defensive.

Archdiocese of Mexico thrilled with apprehension of Santa Muerte priest

The archdiocese of Mexico, represented by mullah Hugo Valdemar, expressed its deep satisfaction that David Romo Guillén, bishop of the Santa Muerte cult, was apprehended, dismissing it as the "patron saint of killers, drug dealers, custodians, thieves, kidnappers, prostitutes, police and extortionists," which it very much is.

Unlike the Archdiocese of Mexico, which if not in name, in practice to be sure is the patron saint of child raping pedophiles.

Calderón's cabinet shuffle: Good riddance to Juan Molinar Horcasitas

Good riddance to the utterly incompetent Juan Molinar Horcasitas, who will step down from his position as secretary of communication and transportation, in favor of Dionisio Pérez Jácome. Rumors have it that he will take on a significant party position within the PAN, yet he remains thoroughly unpopular with many panistas and highly questioned for his role as as head of the IMSS, as well as of the SCT, where corruption charges bloomed.
José Antonio Meade is also replacing Georgina Kessel as energy secretary.


Of note: Roberto Gil Zuarth, national deputy and PAN hotshot, gets a massive consolation price for declining for Gustavo Madero when the vote in the national council to become party president went in his disfavor: He will become the president's personal secretary, achieving vast influence over Calderón's agenda.

Machismo in San Lázaro: Whatever happened to the gender quotas?

First, the breakdown of gender in San Lázaro, Mexico's Chamber of Deputies:
365 are men (73 percent), while 135 are women (27 percent). Yet these figures, in terms of lack of gender parity, are worse than they should be: While the parties have followed federal laws regarding nomination of women candidates, once elected office, far too many diputadas (20-plus) have stepped down, allowing their male diputado suplente, or substitute deputies, to simply take their place, in a crude and particularly .offensive manner in which the parties are brazenly circumventing the laws on candidate gender quotas. They are often referred to as diputadas juanitas, a reference to AMLO's shameful postulation of the street-vendor-cum-stripper-cum-borough chief, Juanito, in Iztapalapa in 2009.
The PRI in particular has resorted to this mechanism.

The defense of Mexico's forests, "ever more dangerous"

The number of environmental crimes, or at least the denunciation thereof, appears on the rise: 5916 legal complaints filed in 2001, vs. 8154 in 2009 - a 40-plus percent rise. This could of course mean either that more crimes are committed or that more crimes are filed.

Regardless, as Greenpeace notes, the defense of Mexico's forests has become an ever more dangerous activity;
defenders of Mexico's forests, including activists, members of Mexico's forest communities, as well as of PROFEPA, the federal attorney for environmental protection, have been harassed, including arbitrary arrests, torture, gunshots, and threats. In particularly Durango, Chihuahua and Michoacán, entire forest zones are "no-go" areas, rather in hands of drug gangs, illegal loggers and, notably according to Greenpeace, thugs hired by international corporations to ensure their exploitation of valuable areas.

Kudos to Milenio for its recent focus on Mexico's forests and environmental crimes.

Yet another victory for gay rights in Mexico City: Social Security for gay couple

Lol Kin Castañeda and Judith Vázquez were among the first gay couples to marry in Mexico City. They were, however, denied future social security benefits from the Mexican social security institute (IMSS), which argued that it only applied to partners of different sex.

They complained, and they won: A judge in labor law ruled that Castañeda can indeed be inscribed as a beneficiary of her partner, and that whether she is of the same sex or not is irrelevant.
Yet another notable legal victory for gay rights in Mexico City.

Days after Coahuila interim governor in place, Rubén Moreira declares his candidacy for governor

Mere days after his brother Humberto stepped down as governor of Coahuila, Rubén Moreira officially declared his intention to seek the PRI nomination to be governor of the state. There will be no campaigning for the candidacy;  Rubén is the PRI's only candidate.

The decision was hardly a shocker; Humberto has long groomed his brother for this position. Yet it is nonetheless, in form and content, a sad throwback to the nepotism of the not-too-distant (if at all distant) past, where direct family members are postulated so as to maintain political control of an entity. As much as political dynasties exist and are criticized in the United States and elsewhere, at least solid political counter forces and political institutions capable of checking them exist, for the most past, unlike in most states in Mexico.
So much for "effective suffrage, no reelection."

Encinas backtracks on "consultation," says Oaxaca different but not why

After the good news from the PRD's national political commission that it would put the question on a possible alliance with the PRD out to a party base vote, Encinas now somewhat disingenuously says he has heard nothing of it, and will reject a PAN alliance regardless. So much for listening to the "people." Encinas also says the case of Oaxaca, where the PRD in a successful alliance ended the disastrous reign of the PRI, is different from Mexico State, though he does not tell us why. Wasn't the main objective to get rid of a 80-odd year PRI monopoly, which thanks to a barrage of dubious or outright illegal measures could only be defeated by a broad coalition?

I wish Encinas could be a bit more independent from AMLO; with all due respect for Encinas long political trajectory, anytime AMLO has said jump, Encinas has jumped. One can even regard his very candidacy at least partly as such; AMLO pushed him hard, in private and in public, when his utterly disastrous postulation of Yeidckol Polevnsky saw his own backers leave him.

A step toward possible prosecution: Judge denies amparo to Amalia García

A Zacatecas city judge denied former Amalia García a writ of amparo, which she had filed through a law firm to seek to avoid legal complaints about her alleged responsibility in administrative irregularities in the state she governed for six years.

García, whose administration is under scrutiny by a new PRI-led government, had sought to freeze the investigation of a possible 1.4 billion pesos embezzlement, where she is herself implicated directly in at least four out of 39 proceedings. No such luck.

Note that the ex governor had earlier claimed she would not resort to any such legal measures, which is now exposed, as it goes, as an "untruth."

García has claimed political persecution, given that the new government is closely allied with her old nemesis, Ricardo Monreal. We shall see.

PRD to decide candidate and question of PAN alliance by the urns

A significant step forward: The PRD's national political commission, where all factions are represented, agreed to subject the question of gubernatorial candidate and party alliances to the ballot box.

Two questions will be asked:
1) "Would you agree to or not a broad alliance of various political parties to achieve alternation in government of the state?" and 2) "Who would be the citizen to lead it?"

Three comments:
1) The PRD must find an external organization to carry out this ballot, to avoid accusations of fraud.
2) The first question should be more specific, adding "including PAN," to avoid any confusion: Would  a YES vote mean support for any political parties? AMLO must not be allowed to coopt this question.
3) Related to 2): If YES on 1 and Alejandro Encinas on 2, will AMLO respect the outcome authorizing an alliance with PAN? Given his track record, I fear he will not.

Calderón's sister does not rule out dialogue with drug gang; wants to be governor

Luisa María Calderón Hinojosa, nicknamed "Cocoa," wants very much to be governor of her and her little brother Felipe Calderón's home state of Michoacán.

Here's a profile of her in El Universal. Of note: She appears not to rule out a call for dialogue with La Familia Michoacana, the Michoacán-based mafia:

"Would make a call for conversion with the cartel "La Familia Michoacana"?
"In part, but in time, and with outcomes they would have to comply with"

She also refuses to call herself a "rightwinger," not surprising given the strength of cardenismo and left wing forces in Michoacán.

Some personal observation: Despite her interest, and the obvious advantage of being the president's sister - I've said it before and will say it again: this stinks of nepotism - her nomination is far from secured. Many panistas in the state I spoke with the past weeks seem to be more inclined toward Senator Marko Cortés Mendoza, who appears to be doing far more proselytizing and activism in the state than Calderón's sister.
He seems much more popular with the bases, though these are mere personal impressions.
Here is his Web page - it's pretty slick.

However, my personal favorite for who would be the best governor of the state of Michoacán:
Antonio Soto Sánchez, former federal senator and deputy, and a man of an impeccable trajectory.

Chiapas: Indigenous elected head of new state human rights council

Lorenzo López Méndez, a tzotzil, was elected head of Chiapas human rights council, which replaces its earlier commission. López Méndez is a long-time defender of indigenous rights, has a master in penal science, and is a doctorand in law.

The creation of a human rights council, replacing a commission, at least nominally signals the elevation of important of human rights, in particular indigenous rights, in Chiapas.
Let's hope it will also mean as much en lo practico.