Senate approves Political Reform: Surprising yet truly significant changes

The Mexican senate yesterday voted to approve what is commonly known simply as La Reforma Política, or a long-pending political reform. It is immensely significant, as includes the following sections:

* Independent or non-party "citizen" candidacies for the 2012 federal election

* Allows for relection of federal and state legislators

* Establishes the mechanism of a popular referendum

* Mechanism for replacing the national president should he die/be incapacitated etc
* Ratification by the senate of regulatory organs
* Gives president more veto powers over budget legislation

Of course, this does not mean the reform has passed; it will now move on to the Chamber of Deputies, and then for ratification of a majority of Mexico's state governments. It is hard to keep one's hope up too high here.

But these are truly profound changes, should they be implemented.

Deep cover-up in Guerrero: Murdered Armando Chavarría's file disappears

A new and drastic turn in the investigation of murdered PRD politician Armando Chavarría, who was head of Guerrero's state congress, and likely would have been governor now had unknown assassins not executed him in his car, right in front of his house.

Now, Alberto López Rosas, who is head of the Guerrero prosecutor's office, informed that the expediente or file that contained the details of the investigation into Chavarría's murder, has simply disappeared. 

It should be recalled that less than a month ago,  now ex-governor Zeferino Torreblanca claimed the case to be "99 percent solved." 

What is Torreblanca, who clearly seems to be the ultimate responsible for the disappearance of the papers, hiding?

Mexico State: Poll numbers give PRI near majority

From Milenio:

As this graphic suggests, the PRI's commanding lead in Mexico State is unlikely to be surpassed: Eruviel Ávila is ahead with nearly 48 percent of the vote, close to a clean full majority. Combined, the PRD and PAN candidates barely scrape in at 30 percent, though it is impossible to assess whether this would have been their combined total if a coalition would have been achieved, or, with a nod to Gestalt theory, the sum would have been greater than the individual parts. 

AMLO's use of language

AMLO is heading out on a -yet another - tour of Mexico's municipalities. He is, as far I can tell, the only person in history to have achieved visiting every single one of Mexico's municipalities, as well as the indigenous usus y costumbres. In this regard, it is quite noteworthy the kind of language he is increasingly using:

"We will make an assessment of how this movement is built from the bottom up with the participation of many citizens, women and free men, who are conscious and of good will, working every day to achieve the transformation. It is so that everyone must do our part to save Mexico together, we are moving forward, we are right, we are going for the rebirth of Mexico, this is the challenge and we are going to achieve it."

The costs of militarization: In Guerrero, president of Congress abused by army

I've driven through many military checkpoints in Guerrero state and been pulled over by a couple, but thankfully never experienced this: Faustino Soto Ramos, until recently a federal deputy and now president of the state congress of Guerrero, says soldiers abused him verbally, fired their weapons in the ground to scare him, and hit him a few times, in front of his own vehicle. As the legislator noted,

"If the president of the Congress is treated like this, imagine ordinary citizens."

Emilio González Márquez well on his way to bankrupt Jalisco

The drunkard and foul-mouthed governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez, is well on his way to bankrupting  the state of Jalisco. According to Milenio, which cites a report to the state congress, the state's debt has quadrupled to nearly 15 billion pesos - all in barely four years of "governing" the state.

I'll let the article speak for itself:

"The growth in liabilities of the state has not come solely from the procurement of new loans, but also for renegotiations of debts inherited by the governor, where he has favored the payment of interest, which means a growing burden on the state's finances, currently amounting to 1.9 billion pesos annually. To that amount must be added the 1.5 billion pesos more authorized by the congress for security purposes, and, the case it will be authorized, 5.612 billion more pesos which the governor has asked for, for various projects"

I do not think the end of González Márquez' government will be a happy one.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari on democracy. After this, irony is dead.

This may not be news, but I've certainly not seen Carlos Salinas writing a column for El Universal before. Under the title, "The Eruption of the Citizen Alternative," Salinas - a crook, a repressor, an ultra-corrupt megalomaniac - opines, in his usual long-winded prose (his last book clocks in at almost 1000 pages) on seemingly everything under the sun, from the North Africa uprisings to Aristotelian republicanism.

Yet the height of cynicism is truly reached when he warns against "speculative capital", and lauds "participatory citizenship."

This is the man whose economic policies - micromanaged by him, top down, including the exclusion of congress from virtually any say during the NAFTA negotiations -  led to an armed rebellion by the EZLN, and whose no-holds-barred opening up of Mexico to speculative capital on terms more liberal than even Pinochet's Chile would lead to an economic disaster just weeks after leaving office.
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And now Salinas wants to lecture Mexicans on the virtues of republicanism?
After this, irony is truly dead.

Stratfor: Mexican legislators are not amused

Texas-based Stratfor - those of the stratospherically priced intelligence analyses, which unfortunately at times decidedly cross the line of the sublime to the utterly ridiculous - published online its most recent "Mexican Drug War Update."

Not quite willing to dole out the required dough for this quarterly report, I have yet to read it, but from secondary sources it appears to suggest that Mexican President Felipe Calderón is going soft on the Sinaloa cartel and El Chapo in order for them to liquidate their comparatively more vicious competitors.

Yet Calderón's defenders have marched to the barricades, and they are not who you might think: According to La Jornada, PRD and PT legislators essentially dismiss the idea that the government is engaging in "pacting" of any kind with the narcos; rather, the difficulties of getting to Chapo is rather a reflection of not only the cartel's superior organization and intelligence, but crucially also the significant social support Chapo allegedly has built up.

Felipe González, PAN senator, moreover claims that Stratfor has erred in the past, such as its claim that most of the weapons showing up with the drug gangs in Mexico come from Central America and not from the United States - an assessment, to be sure, very few analysts share.

Gonzáles also dryly adds that Strafor as well "charges a lot."


Ouch. 

If you love Mexico, you can't vote for PAN?

"No one who loves Mexico can ally with or vote for the party of war, PAN."

This rather stunning slogan comes from AMLO's Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), in a sharp attack on Calderón and PAN. All gloves have apparently come off, and there seem to remain no holds barred in AMLO's campaign for 2012, well under way: The most recent video, featured on the home page of AMLO's movement, makes the further claim that Calderón launched the military offensive against the drug gangs in order to legitimize his government, following the contested 2006 election, but also to to "the dirty work" for United States.

I am hard pressed to imagine how one can get any dirtier than this, which is moreover sadly ironic given that one of AMLO's main arguments in 2006 was the very dirty campaign from PAN: The pupil has now seemingly overcome the master.

In essence: If you vote for my opponent (or ally with them), you don't love your country.
How to top this?

Americas Quarterly on Mexico: Arjan Shahani's Distortion of Reality

Arjan Shahani has a blog hosted by Americas Quarterly, where he opines on things Mexican. 

AQ is published jointly by the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas. Given that the latter is a business organization, founded by David Rockefeller in 1965, and an ardent proponent of neoliberal economics, it should hardly be a surprise that a very business-friendly discourse permeates Shahani's blog - all fine and well, of course; it is certainly his prerogative to promote this agenda.

Another thing is to get one's facts straight, or to quite blatantly distort empirical reality. I have earlier had several quibbles with his column in this regard. Most recently he refers to  PRD as the "Partido Revolucionario Democrático." It truly beats me how one can live in Mexico and blog on Mexican politics and not even get the name of one of the country's main parties straight.

Yet my main point is this: He attacks Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his MORENA movement for "appealing to the disheartened lower classes and sowing seeds of division with over-simplified, anti-business message." He acknowledges - it would be impossible not to  - that "a huge gap between rich and poor continues to exist," but insists that "it is a distortion of reality to wholly blame the private sector. For one, the government is not broke, nor does it lack the resources to spearhead development initiatives. For another, it
significantly taxes the private sector."

Of course it is a distortion to only blame the private sector - who on earth wants to pay taxes voluntarily? Clearly much of the blame lies with a weak federal government incapable of asserting itself to tax better not only Mexico's corporations, but also the rich in general. Yet let us be clear: The blame also lies with them; they have together fought tooth and nail against attempts to tax them, and mostly with great success: Despite calls from OECE, again and again, that Mexico strengthen its tax-raising capability: Mexico has by far the 
lowest level of tax revenue income as a percentage of GDP among any OECD countries.

Another perspective: In Latin America, only Haiti - Haiti - gets less of its GDP from taxes than Mexico.

Perhaps some individual private businesses in Mexico are overtaxed, and certainly the explosion of the informal economy is a huge challenge to a state wanting to raise revenue, but let's not distort the obvious: The rich in Mexico pay very little taxes and are vastly under taxed.

If you're serious about Mexico's development, go after them, and not just one of the messengers criticizing them. Indeed, who is the true "divider" in Mexico: AMLO, or the rich who have successfully fought off nearly every effort to tax them fairly?

Does SME really have no shame?

About a week ago, the SME again created absolute chaos in Mexico City, using disturbingly violent methods. Members of the electricians union damaged and burnt cars, beat up police officers, a fireman, one photographers, and two reporters, and 11 violent thugs were arrested.

Even Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who seeks the votes of the SME and their extended family members and has been extremely lenient toward SME's many disruptive demonstrations, condemned the violence.

SME leader Martín Esparza Flores first claimed that the damage was done by people who had "infiltrated" SME, then accepted that the 11 arrested were SME members, yet now demands the release of these 11 claiming they are political prisoners.

Beyond emphasizing that the SME truly has no shame and will do nothing to curb the violence of its members, the false comparison is truly an insult and a disservice to true political prisoners world wide, of which there are thankfully less and less of in Latin America. 

Mexico's interior ministry incapable or unwilling to stand up to church violations

Mexico's electoral institute IFE earlier found that Hugo Valdemar, the attack-dog spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Mexico, had violated Mexican law by calling for catholics not to vote for the PRD.
IFE then sent the case to the Minstry of the Interior for it to decide sanction. It is worth noting here that IFE had first refused to touch the case, but was ordered to do so by the TEPJF, the electoral tribunal.

Yet what does the Interior Ministry, headed by José Francisco Blake Mora, do? It sends the case back to IFE again! In other words, it cowardly refuses to do its job and actually apply a sanction to Valdemar, who it has already been established broke the law.

This case, serious as it is - should the church use its state-funded organization in favor or against certain political parties? - is becoming a true joke. As 2012 is approaching quickly, it is really urgent that this obvious impunity of the church to break the law must end.

Senator Rosario Ibarra asks new attorney general to prosecute president Luis Echeverría

Senator Rosario Ibarra sent a formal letter to Mexico's new attorney general, Marisela Morales Ibáñez, demanding that former president  Luis Echeverría Álvare be called in to testify in regards to the disappearance of her son Jesús Piedra Ibarra, 36 years ago.

While Echeverría was earlier tried for his role as interior minister during the Tlatelolco massacre, he was acquitted. Yet as Ibarra argues, there are no statutes of limitation on the forced disappearances of people, and that Echeverría, who was president 1970-76 and eventually ran the economy into the ditch, can thus be tried for crimes against humanity.

Napoleón Gómez Urrutia of Los Mineros - now a human rights hero?

Napoleón Gómez Urrutia, nominally the head of the SNTMMSRM miners union, is living in exile in Canada. On Monday, he was awarded the  Meany-Kirkland human rights prize, given annually.

Notably, however, Gómez Urrutia is living in exile because he is charged with embezzlement of 55 million dollars, and new and dissident miner unions have been formed.

For ALC-CIO's reasoning, click here. Some highlights:

"His activism quickly incurred the wrath of the Mexican government and major mining companies. In February 2006, the government struck back, withdrawing legal recognition of Gómez’s election as the leader of the union, but Gómez continued undeterred. When a February 19, 2006, explosion at Grupo Mexico’s Pasta de Conchos mine killed 65 mineworkers, Gómez publicly accused the government of 'industrial homicide.' In response to this criticism, the government accelerated its attack by filingcriminal charges against Gómez and other union leaders... In the face of this campaign of repression, Gómez took the difficult decision to leave Mexico and go to Vancouver, Canada. From there he has waged a five-year effort to win justice for his union and for all democratic unions in Mexico...For his courageous commitment to defend the aspirations of Mexican workers to higher living standards, to democratize labor unions, to promote rule of law and a better future for their country, the AFL-CIO is pleased to nominate Napoleón Gómez Urrutia...

I am confident that a lot of miners, including ex-workers and associates of Gómez Urrutia's own union, will take great issue with this interpretation of events.

PRD claims Calderón's visit to John Paul II's beatification violates constitution

The PRD objects to Calderón's upcoming visit to the Vatican:


According to party president Jesús Zambrano, Calderón "can not attend a religious ceremony of this kind nor should he do it, because the Mexican government is obliged to treat  religious associations all equally from the perspective of fairness."

PRD congresswoman Leticia Quezada also noted pointedly that by attending, "Calderón overlooks the ominous scandal that involved one of the leading representatives of the Catholic Church in Mexico, Marcial Maciel, and yet still decided to attend the ceremony."

If the constitutional argument doesn't work on Calderón, perhaps one should indeed remind him that he as in addition attending a ceremony that beatifies the protector of this and other pederasts.

One billion pesos' worth of "irregularities" in one year: Ulises Ruiz audit

In just the last year of  Ulises Ruiz's disastrous administration in Oaxaca, the state comptroller has found more than a billion pesos of "anomalies" and "irregularities," indicating a strong likelihood of government corruption and embezzlement. The audit continues for the entirety of Ruiz's government, but to repeat: One billion pesos in just 2010 alone.

Quite likely, given the determination of Governor Gabino Cué, some former state officials and administrators will end up behind the bars. Will Cué have the strength to go after Ruiz himself?

The gloves are off

From Alonso Lujambio, sec. of education, responding to PRI leader Humberto Moreira, and not exactly holding back here:

"I'm tired of listening to the PRI say they know how to govern. They blew up the economy of family households with the 'Error of December' in 1994, they blew up the economy of family households when they allowed a delirious runaway inflation in the 1980s; they cried, Jose Lopez Portillo cried in Congress because he didn't know how to rule... what better proof do we have that they do not know how to govern the country? In 1976 [PRI]  again blew up the family economy with the devaluation, and in 1968 they killed students. Who is that knows how to govern?

On legalization of drugs: Quotes of the day from Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize in literature and a public intellectual within and far beyond his native Peru (and far more sensical than his offspring, Álvaro, more interested in provoking than serious argumentation), comes of strongly in favor of the legalization of drugs

"There is no other way. It is difficult and risky, but I think that repression leads to what we are seeing: an increase in production.

And on the war on drugs:
"I thank that the path we are currently on, it is going to lead to that all of Latin America will be what Mexico is today."

An act of apparent political vengeance: PAN loses party registry in Guerrero

In the state of Guerrero, where PAN in last year's gubernatorial election the end declined for winning PRD candidate Ángel Aguirre Rivero, the state's electoral institute, Instituto Electoral del Estado de Guerrero (IEEG), has canceled PAN's party registry in the state as well as the payment of public funds to the party.

The reason? According to IEEG, is is simply because the PAN, quite likely due to declining for the PRD, only achieved 2.5 percent of the vote in the state.

PAN, however, accuse the IEEG of "political vengeance" given PAN's support of the PRD. It is not hard to see the point: While the 2.5-percent rule is certainly valid, PAN does, however, remain a national party, and the minimum-support stipulation arguably then does not apply.

The mechanism of referendum may be approved as part of political reform

Reportedly, the Mexican Senate is inching forward toward an agreement on the mechanism of referendum, where popular consultations and citizen initiatives would be part of the capital-letter "Political Reform" currently being discussed (though perennially stagnated in the not exactly too hard-working Senate).

How it would work:
- The Mexican Congress would be in charge of designing the question
- The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) would be in charge of organizing the referendum
- Should the result of the vote be a 50% majority-plus-one-vote or larger, the referendum would be binding for the congress.

Certain "padlocks" are in place, however:
- Citizens cannot question/put up for a vote electoral results
- One cannot vote over the state's incomes and expenses
- National security and functioning of armed forces not up for vote
- Rights enshrined in the Constitution cannot be a subject of referendum.

Disturbances in Michoacán over illegal logging

In the predominantly indigenous zona purépecha in Michoacán, hundreds of villagers attacked what they claim were illegal loggers, and even threatened to "rise up in arms" against local authorities. Many were wounded, including from gunshots.

Clandestine, illegal logging - talamontes - is a huge problem in Michoacán, as in other regions: According to the Federal Forestry Commision, more than 2,500 illegal workshops are scattered throughout the purépecha zone, which has lost a significant of forests to this illegal activity.

Unidos Podemos Más: The left's coalition behind Encinas officially registered

Unidos Podemos Más: I guess "Estado de México Nos Une" sounded a tad too awkward.

This is the official name of the now-official left coalition of PRD-Convergencia-PT, which just registered with Mexico State's electoral institute, behind the candidacy of Alejandro Encinas. The IEEE must approve or reject the registration within a week or so.

Unidos Podemos Más - we'll see.

Conspiracy Theorists of the Right: Javier Lozano

Javier Lozano, secretary of work and social welfar and someone who has strongly expressed his interest in being PAN's presidential candidate in 2012, claimed that PRI and PRD agreed to bury PRI's and PAN's suggested labor reform, in return for ending a PAN-PRD alliance in Mexico State.

This is certainly one of the wilder climes I've heard for a while, and certainly from the political right.
I find Lozana in general to be a particularly unappealing candidate, and as much for his personal ways of being - discourses, behavior in public, arrogance, etc - as of his actual policies. Unless he come up with anything more concrete than this wild claim, to this I can add: Conspiracy theorist.

No "desafuero, part II" in Mexico State?

Eruviel Ávila, PRI's candidate to succeed Enrique Peña Nieto as governor of Mexico State, notably declared PRI would not seek to impugn Alejandro Encinas' residency requirement in Mexico State, thus inhibiting the latter's candidacy. This is the second time Ávila has sought to distance himself from the national PRI; a few days ago, notably, he spoke out against PRI's national leader Humberto Moreira when in his typical drunk-rabble-rouser-looking-for-a-barfight style argued PRI would aplastar, or crush/destroy/squash the opposition. Ávila was careful to point out he didn't regard political opposition as something to be "destroyed."

Yet what if Encinas start catching up on the PRI candidate? The party, despite claims to the contrary, has not renovated or discarded its authoritarian, corrupt modus operandi. Expect the party to quickly discard its promise in this eventuality.

Rosario Marín calls on voters to abandon Obama - yet why?

La Jornada is running a story today on Rosario Marín, the first Latina Secretary of the Treasury in the United States, who was moreover born in Mexico City. Basically, the article repeats Marín's claims that Obama "duped" Latinos. Much to be said about this, indeed - Bush did far more in terms of legislative initiatives than Obama has ever done, and I'll be the first one to criticize his timidness on this subject.

Yet the article barely notes in passing that Marín served the Bush administration. Moreover, a minimum of research into her background would reveal a Republican perennially embroiled in ethics scandals, who staunchly defended Bush's 2000 candidacy. Of course she will call on Latinos not to vote for Obama - but in order to draw them to the Republican Party! I wish La Jornada could provide a bit more context to these kind of stories

A truly embarrassing spectacle: Calderón to attend John Paul II beatification

This is truly embarrassing. As is long known, the Vatican, desperate to shore up a crumbling client base, has resorted to its hitherto most blatant act of populism, namely putting deceased Pope John Paul II on literally a fast track toward sainthood. Though dead for only six years, he will be beatified the coming May 1, after, quote, "Pope Benedict XVI affirmed the judgment of Vatican medical experts and theologians that a French nun's neurological disorder had been miraculously cured after she prayed to the memory of John Paul in June 2005."

As always within the Catholic church, a permanent contradiction: It is not enough to have faith alone, but one is also in desperate need of some physical evidence of the divine being, which of course undermines the very concept of faith itself: You don't believe just to believe, but because you see physical evidence - in this case a nun "miraculously cured" by Alzheimer. I find it hard to believe that even Pope Benedict truly buys this rubbish.

Yet guess who is embarrassing himself and his nation by attending this ludicrous charade? Mexico's President Felipe Calderón is. Los Pinos felt still compelled to declare that his presence at this quack ceremony is "consistent with the principles of secularism of the Mexican State," which is highly dubious at best. But a larger point is: Should a democratically elected president and head of a nominally secular state  - he will attend the ceremony as head of state and not as personal believer - lend credence to this spectacle by attending? Of course not.

This is Calderón's second visit to the Vatican: In 2007, he revealed to the Pope that it is "complicated to separate the office of the President of the Republic from own convictions and emotions."

What a sad confession.

A union leader with a jet of her own: Elba Esther Gordillo of SNTE

Elba Esther Gordillo and SNTE, the largest Mexican teachers union and one of the largest unions worldwide, is the subject of a Reuters article.  Nothing new, but the extraordinary story of Gordillo and SNTE is always worth revisiting.

Highlight:

"With mansions in Mexico City and California and a private jet, Gordillo presides over a system in which the union sells posts to aspiring teachers and skims off money from government funds destined for new computers and teachers' housing."

Gordillo and SNTE remain one of the largest roadblock to Mexico's development.

Who is the candidate in Mexico State - AMLO or Encinas?

AMLO, in a mass meeting held outside the Chamber of Deputies, announced that Alejandro Encinas, PRD-PT-Convergencia's candidate to be governor of Mexico State, will create a new publicly owned company that will re-hire all the workers of the union Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas (SME) who lost their job then their old dysfynctional compay Luz y Fuerza was shut down/taken over by another state-owned company, CFE.

So now AMLO is making campaign promises on behalf of Alejandro Encinas. Exactly who is running for governor in Mexico State, the former or the latter?

Bay of Pigs: Lázaro Cárdenas wanted to defend Cuba in 1961

Given that it is 50 years since the ill-fated, idiotic undertaking known as Bay of Pigs, the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in a celebration reminded the audience that Lázaro Cárdenas del Río himself, Mexico's progressive president 1934-1940, wanted to form a brigade of volunteers to help Cuba repel the CIA-organized invasion of batistanos, mercenaries, and general thugs, though the invasion attempt ended in failure less than three days later.

It certainly is an image worth pondering: El tata Cárdenas, himself a fighter in Mexico's revolution, fighting on a Cuban beach - presumably with a treinta-treinta.

Ebrard strikes back against AMLO: Armando Ríos Piter new parliamentary leader

After receiving a heavy pummeling by AMLO, who forced Ebrard to drop his support for a PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State, Ebrard struck back: Armando Ríos Piter will replace Alejandro Encinas as the head of PRD's parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies. Ilich Augusto Lozano will be the vice coordinator.

The former is very close to Ebrard; the latter is a member of the social-democratic Nueva Izquierda faction opposed to AMLO.

New World Bank indicators on Mexico 2006-2008: A sorry read

La Jornada reports on new indicators on Mexico, released by the World Bank. It's not happy reading.

* Poverty levels from 42.6 percent in 2006 to 47.4 in 2008
* Rural poverty from 54.7 to 60.8 of every 100 people
* From 35.6 to 39.8 percent urban poverty

The article also points out that spending on health and education stagnated, while that of military spending increased sharply: From 44.494 billion (2006) to 52.235 billion (2007) to 54.977 billion (2008) to 64.348 billion pesos in 2009. This remains, however, at a comparatively low level: 0.5 percent of gross domestic product. For comparison: U.S. defense spending for FY 2010: 4.7 percent of GDP.

NAFTA and U.S. dumping: A very insightful quick read

NAFTA, as is well known by now, has had "winners" and "losers" on both sides on the border.

Here is an exceptionally noteworthy article by Timothy  Wise of Tufts University on the article of U.S. dumping of agricultural products in Mexico, originally published in NACLA Report of the Americas.

Some highlights:

* "Mexican farmers on average lost more than $1 billion per year during the nine-year period of 1997–2005, with more than half the losses suffered by the country’s embattled corn farmers"
* "Without exception, the United States exported {agricultural] products at prices below what it cost to produce them, one of the definitions of dumping under World Trade Organization rules."
* "The losses from U.S. dumping surpass the total value of Mexico’s annual tomato exports to the United States, widely touted as Mexico’s biggest NAFTA success story in agriculture."

I also highly recommend Wise's other excellent works, such as the co-written Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA, available directly as pdf here, as well as the new study Subsidizing Inequality: Mexican Corn Policy Since NAFTA, available here in English and here in Spanish.

"Epistolary debate": AMLO vs. Carlos Loret de Mola exchange worth a look

The polemic between AMLO and El Universal journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, which started with a column by the latter that pointed out alleged inconsistencies in AMLO's rhetoric vs. reality, is worth a look.

Here's a page set up by El Universal that presents AMLO's reply to Loret de Mola, in the form his spokesperson César Yáñez, and a reply again by Loret de Mola, in a side-by-side format.

Who is most convincing? You be the judge.

Last session of Xicoténcatl: The Mexican Senate moves

At 23 minutes past 3 pm yesterday, the last session was held in the Mexican Senate's building Xicoténcatl. Now, the Senate will rather meet in the brand new, infinitely delayed complex in Reforma 135, on the corner of Insurgentes, which has cost about 2 and a half billion pesos.

The beautiful Xicoténcatl is filled with history - it has been the seat of the Senate's sessions for eight decades - and here are a few anecdotes from building personnel. My favorite: Jorge Cruickshank García, who as the  first-ever opposition senator (Partido Popular Socialista) in 1976 was ridiculed by his PRI colleagues, yet coolly responded, "One there there will be opposition and you will laugh no more."

The new Senate complex will be inaugurated today. Will the new high-tech environment actually result in better work productivity and a higher passage of laws?

Alas: Even Encinas a "unity candidate" of the PRD. The death of primaries.

I'll be the first to admit that Alejandro Encinas is PRD's best card at having a shot at the Mexico State governorship, even though those chances appear much dimmer given what is at least the official end to a PRD-PAN electoral alliance in the entity. However, rather than going through any kind of party vote or primary, Encinas was simply pronounced to be PRD's "unity" candidate by its National Political Commission (CPN).

All the three main parties in Mexico State, then,  resorted to "unity" candidates; the PAN, most recently, designated Luis Felipe Bravo Mena its gubernatorial hopeful.

This certainly makes any criticism of PRI for the dedazo designation of  Eruviel Ávila ring hollow: The PRD, in the end, chose its candidate in what is in essence the exact same manner.

Tamaulipas, another PRI-led state run into the ditch

Tamaulipas recently "celebrated" the first 100 days of government of Egidio Torre Cantú, who became the PRI candidate following the murder of his brother Rodolfo.

According to detractors of the government, there is little to celebrate: Apparently, the government cannot present one single achievement to boast of, and is even struggling to pay its employees back pay, some back to January

The blame cannot exactly be put on the shoulders of Torre Cantú alone. According to the state's secretary of finance, Alfredo González Fernández, the previous government of Eugenio Hernández Flores, also of PRI, left the state with a debt of at least 14 billion pesos (!), while reportedly cashing in on lucrative building contracts awarded to Tohesa, a company of which Hernández Flores is a partner.

Yet while its politicians line their pockets, Tamaulipas is teetering on being a "failed state," following the decades of misrule by the PRI.

IFE starts to register voters living "abroad." More balanced this time?

IFE, the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute responsible for arranging Mexico's federal elections,  now has started the process of registering voters "abroad," meaning in all essence the United States, for the 2012 contests. Mexican expats can access the site http://www.votoextranjero.mx/ for more information.

In this regard, I would here like to particularly recommend the chapter "Absentee Voting and Transnational Civic Engagement among Mexican Expatriates, by James McCann et al in the 2009 edited volume Consolidating Mexico's Democracy: The 2006 Presidential Campaign in Comparative Perspective by Jorge  Domínguez et al.

In essence, it describes how PRI-PAN-PRD support was quite even in the US, but that the (abysmally low number of) voters who actually took the trouble of voting in the US, did it overwhelmingly for PAN. They explain this as essentially due to the institutional hurdles to be overcome, far easier surmounted by more resource-rich and more highly educated panistas.

Let's hope IFE makes a serious effort to address these inequities in the expat voting process.

Even PAN's national party leader hints at a "de facto alliance"

Quite noteworthy: PAN's national president, Gustavo Madero, said yesterday that while the PRD's national council, through lack of a 2/3 majority, failed to approve an official alliance with the PAN, a "de facto alliance" between the two opposition parties might very well be an option.

It is very hard to imagine an end to the 82-year-old hegemony of the PRI in Mexico State if PAN and PRD go separately, and Madero knows this fully well. Yet never before has the possibility that PAN may decline in favor of the PRD candidate been noted by someone of Madero's stature.

The composition of PRD's new organs II): The national political commission

The PRD's political commission (CPN) is a relatively new organ that has taken on much of the executive power of the  national secretariat (which was indeed earlier called the national executive committee, CEN). The CPN is now the principal organ when quick party decisions need to be made, and incorporates, in addition to the party president and secretary general, 13 representatives form PRD's internal factions. 


Notably, to great protest from particularly the ADN faction, the controversial, to say the least, Rene Bejarano Juvenal, head of the IDN faction (though now nominally headed by his wife, sec. general of PRD Dolores Padierna), got a seat at the PRD's CPN. ADN argued that Bejarano's "public behavior is contrary to the principles and values of democracy, and therefore has damaged the public image of the PRD" - a clear reference to Bejarano/Padierna's recurring involvement in scandals, most notably the 2004 "video scandals," yet giving Bejarano a seat at the CPN is a clear measure of the importance of the social movement sectors under his control, mostly through clientelistic means. 


In terms of relation of strength, out of the newly designated 13 CPN members, 6 will be for the Nueva Izquierda-ADN camp, with 5 for the G-8 group close to AMLO, mostly made up by the IDN. Also, Marcelo Ebrard will for the first time be able to appoint two members of the CPN - Gastélum and Serrano.
As such, Ebrard's group will hold the crucial balance between the two main camps in the PRD.

Comisión Política Nacional/National Political Commission:

Jesús Zambrano (Nueva Izquierda)

Dolores Padierna (G-8-IDN)

Miguel Barbosa Huerta (Nueva Izquierda)

Luis Sánchez Jiménez (ADN)

Miguel Alonso Raya (Nueva Izquierda)

Enrique Romero Aquino (G-8-IDN) 

Amador Jara Cruz (ADN)

René Juvenal Bejarano Martínez (G-8/IDN) 

Martha Dalia Gastelúm (Ebrard group)

Gilberto Ensástiga Santiago (G-8)

Héctor Serrano Cortés (Ebrard group)

Margarita Guillaumin  (Nueva Izquierda)

Alejandro Sánchez Camacho (G-8/IDN) 

Carlos Sotelo García (G-8)

Eloí Vázquez (Foro Nuevo Sol)

The composition of PRD's new organs I): The national secretariat

The composition of PRD's newly elected party organs is taking place. Here are the confirmed names, from PRD's bulletins, Their faction affiliations, as far as I recall them and from news reports (La Jornada misspell virtually every single name), are in parenthesis

While the president and secretary general had already been elected, out of the 15 new national secretaries, the Nueva Izquierda-ADN social-democratic majority factions in the PRD gets 8, while the pro-AMLO "G-8" group, consisting above all of the IDN of Bejarano/Padierna, gets 5. 

Secretariado Nacional/National Secretariat
Jesús Zambrano Grijalva - Presidente - Nueva Izquierda
Dolores Padierna Luna - Secretaria General - G-8 (IDN)


Adriana Díaz Contreras   -  Políticas de Gobierno y Bienestar Social - ADN

Socorro Ceseñas Chapas - Acción Política Electoral- G-8 (IDN)

Mónica Soto Elizaga -  Equidad y Género - G-8 (Redir)

Lucio Borreguin - Seguridad, Justicia y Derechos Humanos - G-8 (Izquierda Social)

Ísela Soto - Educación Democrática y Formación Política - G-8 (IDN)

Alejandro Martínez - Democracia Sindical y Movimientos Sociales - Nueva Izquierda

Armando Contreras - Alianza y Relaciones Políticas Nacionales - Ebrard's group

Vladimir Aguilar -  Planeación y Proyectos Especiales - Foro Nuevo Sol, close to Ebrard

Julio César Tinoco Oro - Relaciones Internacionales - G-8 (IDN)

Ángel Cedillo Hernández  - Organización y Desarrollo Partidario - ADN 

Alejandra Soriano -  Asuntos Juveniles - Nueva Izquierda

Juan Manuel Fosil -  Desarrollo Sustentable y Ecología - ADN

Pablo Arreola Ortega - Trabajadores del Campo, Desarrollo Rural y Pueblos Indios -Ex-PT, NI/ADN 

Javier Salinas - Administración Finanzas y Promoción de Ingresos - Nueva Izquierda

Verónica Juárez Piña - Comunicación, Difusión y Propaganda - Nueva Izquierda

Carlos Navarrete launches campaign to be Mexico City mayor

Senator Carlos Navarrete announced that he is seeking the PRD's candidacy to be jefe de gobierno of Mexico City. He could be a strong candidate to succeed Marcelo Ebrard, given a generally very positive image in the population beyond the PRD's core voters.

PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State officially over

Following the approval of the PRD-PAN electoral alliance in Mexico State by the PRD's state branch, its national council, which has the last say over the issue, voted yesterday, 91-77 in favor of the alliance. Given that this is far from a required 2/3 majority, it effectively means that the PRD-PAN alliance in this state is officially dead.

Notably, the about 17 council members regarded as close to Marcelo Ebrard didn't even take a position, but chose to abstain - as did national party leader Jesús Zambrano - despite earlier having been strongly in favor of the alliance. I find it hard not to accept the interpretation that this is also Andrés Manuel López Obrador's victory over Marcelo Ebrard, whose critics accuse him of acting as a "subordinate" of AMLO. Clearly Ebrard sensed that the alliance by now was close to a lost cause, and abstained in order not to provoke further tension with AMLO, who accepts any and all criticism as "treason" but it also means that the inevitable AMLO-Ebrard showdown was merely postponed. And in my view, Ebrard clearly did not come strengthened out of this prelude.

Listen to Lula: Lula suggests PEMEX-PETROBRAS alliance

Ex-president of Brazil Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, appearing in Acapulco for the 74 Banking Convention, said that Mexico should not fear associations with private capital in its energy sector. Lula also notably offered an "alliance" between the two state-owned oil companies.

Mexican politicians would be wise to listen to Lula; in Brazil, the state still has a majority share of PETROBRAS, yet thanks to continuous expansion, after attracting foreign and national private capital and technical know-how, this company is among the most dynamic, profitable, and forward-looking in the world.

Even more important: The growth of PETROBRAS has allowed the Brazilian government to drastically up its spending on social and anti-poverty programs.

I would never expect Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his followers to accept as much as a cent of private capital in the Mexican PEMEX, yet perhaps some of the less dogmatic people in PRD and PRI will take note of Lula's call.

Mexico State PRD branch votes - again - in favor of PAN alliance, but it is a swan song

The Mexico State branch of the PRD, following the recent referendum over a PRD-PAN alliance, voted again in favor of them. The vote, in the PRD's state council, was 158-92, with 12 abstentions.

While the PRD state branch does not need a 2/3 vote, the national party branch does, and the pro-alliance forces look increasingly unlikely to achieve that number. Consequently, the PRD-PAN alliance by now appears a lost cause, in the long run due to the incessant and effective opposition by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but more immediately due to the apparent abandonment by Marcelo Ebrard of the project.

Despite having been a long-time active proponent of PRD-PAN alliances, Ebrard has recently rallied behind the man he thought might be convinced into running on a joint PRD-PAN platform - Alejandro Encinas - but his rejection of this proposal effectively leaves a common candidacy dead.

Does it get more groveling than this? Eruviel Ávila pleads for help

Eruviel Ávila, PRI's dedazo'd candidate for governor of Mexico State, pleaded for the help of  Elba Esther Gordillo, head of the teachers "union" SNTE, and the corporatist cadres under her iron control:

"I need maestra Elba Esther; I need the teachers from the state of Mexico from the federalized sector; I need the state teachers, I need everyone."

While it has long been known that Gordillo has essentially returned to the PRI, and that her cadres, always for sale to the highest bidder, can swing, and have swung, many elections - in Mexico state, there are more than 70,000 federalized teachers and 70,000 state teachers into this corporatist holdover of a PRI union - can one at least show a modicum of dignity and not literally beg for their support?

Marisela Morales Ibáñez confirmed as new attorney general

In her Senate hearings, Marisela Morales Ibáñez promised not to politicize the law should she become attorney general of Mexico. That was not enough to convince the PRD senators, but today she was nonetheless confirmed as the first woman attorney general in Mexico's history, with 84  YES votes, 15 NO, and 7 absentions, including 5 PT senators and PRD senators Rosalinda Hernández and Josefina Cota.

As expected, given their earlier grievances with Morales Ibáñez, the PRD's senatorial group voted against her.

PRD skeptical of Marisela Morales Ibáñez as attorney general, and with reason

Should Marisela Morales Ibáñez be confirmed as Mexico's next attorney general - as opposed to other cabinet members, the attorney general must be confirmed by the Senate - it will be the highest office a woman has ever held in Mexico, as far as I can see - a development to be lauded on its own. Given the support she has received from both PAN and PRI, it seems likely she will be the new attorney general, after Arturo Chávez Chávez announced his resignation.

The PRD, however, remain skeptical, and they have reason to. According to party president Jesús Zambrano,
- She worked on the proceedings for the infamous El Encinos property, which would lead to the desafuero or in practice the botched impeachment efforts against AMLO in 2005
- She was  head of the Office of Special Investigations on Organized Crime (Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada, SIEDO), when the infamous Michacanazo was launched against against alleged organized crime in Michoacán, targeting primarily PRD officials and politicians, yet where one by one were released from prison due to lack of any evidence.

From the PRD's point of view, such a trajectory understandably does not inspire too much confidence.

With no apparent irony, AMLO calls for a popular vote on the labor reform

Having gone to hysterical lengths to block a PRD-PAN electoral alliance in Mexico State, naming his opponents traitors and worse, and then proceeding to completely disrespecting and ignoring the results of the recent popular vote among party members in favor of said alliance - 80 percent said yes - AMLO now calls for a popular vote over the proposed labor reforms of PRI and PAN.

With no apparent sense of irony at all.

Homosexuality a disease, says bishop of Celaya, Guanajuato. Now we know.

The great enlightened bishop of Celaya, Benjamin Castillo Plascencia, informs us that he is, of course, not homophobic, but rather cares so much for his fellow beings that he just can't keep his profound knowledge of gay issues to himself:

"It has nothing to do with homophobia. I just cannot accept that a sick person is sick; it hurts me that the person is sick, and I can hardly accept this. One must accept this sickness, and fight to overcome it."

And the final clincher: Why have anyone contracted this terrible disease, then? Well, it's because they have "stories related to abuses."

Thank heavens we have chaste men like Benjamin Castillo Plascencia to help care for these sick people and spread his, albeit non-scientific, but undoubtedly profound, knowledge of gay matters.

What planet does sec. of education Alonso Lujambio live on? Crime a "moral" issue

Alonso Lujambio, Calderón's secretary of education, who wants badly to be president but in his job has utterly failed to challenge the choke hold the SNTE teachers' "union" is having on Mexico's education levels, manage to serve this gold grain of wisdom on crime:

"I categorically reject the hypothesis that poverty leads social groups to associate with illegal activities. Those who do opt for this option, do it freely."

Despite that the relationship between crime, inequality, and poverty is among the most solid and well documented in the social science literature, Lujambio wants to let Mexicans know that poverty has nothing to do with Mexico's crime levels; rather, it is a "moral choice," an elección moral.

It is not about ideology, but simply empirical reality. And to think that this Neanderthal is nominally in charge of Mexico's education: that, rather, is a moral choice, and a poor one at that.

The Mexican Green Party: A family enterprise devoid of principles

Milenio on Sunday had an excellent article on the Mexican Green Party (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, PVEM), a party that even among other opportunistic parties truly stand out.

There are several small parties in Mexico - Convergencia, PANAL, PT, etc - that are characterized by very little if any ideology at all, but with a stunning level of opportunism and lack of principles, yet even compared with this ilk, the Green Party is truly something special: It is not only the world's only rightwing "environmentalist" party - one of its main issues has been to reintroduce the death penalty in Mexico - but also because the party has shown pretty much a complete disregard even for environmental issues: The European Federation of Green Parties as a result denied recognizing the PVEM as a green party.

One may also recall the "niño verde" scandal of 2004, when Jorge Emilio González Martínez, son of party founder Emilio González Torres - the party is essentially a family enterprise - was caught on tape apparently negotiating bribes where land grants would be given to beach developers in protected zones, in return for cash.

Nor does the party support any of the social liberal issues of other post-materialist green parties: In Mexico City, the party did not vote in favor of the law that legalized gay unions; in Guadalajara, moreover, its candidate for mayor in 2009, Gamaliel Ramírez, was fined by the state's electoral institute for anti-gay slurs against a gay opponent.

In any case: The Milenio article does a great job of detailing the lack of any political convictions of this party. Mexico's democracy would be far better off without this party.

Will PAN decline for Encinas in Mexico State?

Notably, Francisco Gárate, PAN's representative to the state's electoral institute, did not discard the possibility that the PAN candidate will eventually decline in favor of the PRD candidate, should the latter be much further ahead in the polls. This did indeed happen in Guerrero, but PAN is much stronger in Mexico State, and this will not fly well with many of its base members.

Mexico City polls: PRD has stopped fall, growing

The glass is half full or half empty: One the one hand, the PRD's vote intention in its Mexico City bastion is 25 percent, down from 36 percent in 2007. On the other hand, according to this El Universal poll, the party appears to have stopped its decline and is actually on the rise. The PRI, notably, follows with 20 percent, while PAN is down to 12. Given that no official candidate for Mexico City mayor has been chosen by any party, this is of course very preliminary and says little of support for actual candidates.

Given that she was PRI president, Beatriz Paredes Rangel has the highest recognition - 92 percent respond that they have heard of here - but I rather see Senator María de los Ángeles Moreno as the PRI's eventual candidate:  The arch-salinista has done a lot of groundwork for her campaign in Mexico City as head of the Federal District Commission in the Senate, while Paredes has been busy with the national PRI.

For more on potential candidates, see the full graphic here

Dirty dealings in Mexico's National Forestry Commission?

Mexico's National Forestry Commission, Comisión Nacional Forestal (Conafor), has seen its budget increase 32-fold since its foundation in 2001 during the government of Vicente Fox. Its 2010 expenses stand at 6.57 billion pesos. All good and well, one might think, given Mexico's continued emphasis on reforestation and restoration of the country's forests.

However, Milenio has gotten access to a report by the organization's own comptroller, which strongly suggest that Conafor's procurement committee has drastically favored and overpaid some actors for tree plants and tree production. The report in particular signals business owners Carlos Urrea and Raúl Jiménez Michel, both from Jalisco and members of prominent PAN families from the state, as apparent beneficiaries of favoritism from Conafor - and its increased budget. One can only hope that a criminal investigation will be launched as well.

Ángel Aguirre, governor

Ángel Aguirre assumed as governor of Guerrero Friday, an event, which was attended by range of PRD and aliancista governors, and Interior Secretary José Francisco Blake Mora.

His predecessor, Zeferino Torreblanca, didn't even bother showing up for the ceremony

First order of the new government: Signing an agreement with Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard to set up the Metrobus system in Guerrero. Expect more to follow soon: During his campaign, Aguirre often spoke of copying Mexico City's very successful social programs, some set up by AMLO, others developed by Ebrard. He may in the end prove some of his critics wrong and do govern from the center-left.