Alejandro Encinas achieved the "impossible" - reunite AMLO and Cárdenas

In his first campaign appearance in Mexico State, PRD-PT-Convergencia gubernatorial candidat Alejandro Encinas already achieved quite a feat: To make Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Andrés Manuel López Obrador appear together on stage in his support, and as well Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and, to add, PRD national president Jesús Zambrano, of the social democratic Nueva Izquierda faction long in confrontation with AMLO.

This truly is quite a feat - I cannot even remember when AMLO and Cárdenas shared a stage, let alone one where the main factions of the party appear together. Now will Encinas manage an upset win in the state as well? At the risk of getting carried away:  That scenario just became just a tad more possible, given this remarkable display of party unity.

The historic photo, from Milenio:

Finally, a purge in Mexico's national institute of migration, INM

Last week, news broke that 7 regional bosses of the Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM) are under investigation for corruption. This is certainly good news, and organizations such as Amnesty International also backed  the process, though it called for a far more thorough investigation.

The measure come very late. The INM has long been commonly regarded as heavily infiltrated by organized crime, and recent horror stories where INM agents handed over captured undocumented migrants to the murderous Zetas are likely only the tip of the iceberg.

The suspended INM bosses: Tamaulipas, Aurelio Gerardo Alamán Bueno; in Veracruz, Humberto Alessandrini; in Tabasco, Luis Alberto Molina Ríos; in Mexico State, Jorge Octavio Armijo, and in San Luis Potosí, Elodia Gutiérrez Estrada. In Oaxaca, Omar Adrián Heredia had already stepped down, and is also under investigation.

Critics of the INM such as PRD Senator Carlos Naverrete, has called for a far more thorough purge, and Salvador Beltrán del Río, head of INM after the disgraced Cecilia Romero stepped down following the Tamaulipas mass grave discovery, has signaled a willingness to carry this out.

Yesterday, Beltrán del Río revealed that from August 2010-April 2011, more than 200 INM employees have been fired, with a penal process open against 40 of them for the graveness of their alleged offense. Special exams, including lie detectors, will be used on 1,500 employees in Tamaulipas, Veracruz and Chiapas, and agents will be periodically rotated in order to avoid collusion with organized crime.

For whatever it's worth, it is a start.

Michoacán burning

For about a month or so, the community of Cherán in Michoacán have fought against talamontes or illegal loggers who not only destroy their forests, but also have murdered those who try to stop them. The comuneros or Cherán went as far as to take matters into their own hands last week, setting up roadblocks, and at the same time calling for intervention from the federal army,

Cherán is an indigenous Purépecha community of around 18,000 inhabitants, yet illegal logging, tied directly to violent organized criminal gangs, affect many other communities as well. Even Joaquín López-Dóriga, writing in Milenio, took note of the events in Cherán, which seems to be one of the very first when a community takes up arms against organized crime.

Here is the story covered in English by the Voice for Human Rights.

It appears that finally, following a month of pleas, the military has now arrived in Cherán 

How to deal with criticism if you're governor of San Luis Potosí

On his way to an event honoring teachers, Governor Fernando Toranzo of San Luis Potosí passed a teacher who told him, "Hola, señor corrupción."

The PRI governor's response? He punched him in the face.

When the teacher tried to fight back, he was blocked by the governor's bodyguards.

My response: Pinche cobarde.

National Teachers Day: Ten thousand march against Elba Esther Gordillo

During the National Teachers Day in Mexico this Sunday, more than 10,000 teachers, most of them from the dissident teacher union Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educación (CNTE), not to be confused with the SNTE, marched in Mexico City demanding that Gordillo resign.

A show of force, but compared with SNTE's strength of at least 1.4 million members, a drop in the ocean.

Of note: Calderón himself appeared with Elba Esther Gordillo, following less than stellar relations between the two, as Gordillo has in essence returned to backing the PRI and in particular Enrique Peña Nieto.

2012 polls for Mexico's presidential election

From El Universal, the results of a recent poll on preferences for 2012. Yes, 18 months ahead, this is essentially quite worthless at this point, but I challenge you to resist the temptation. Nothing shockingly new. 

From my viewpoint, I note that the PRD is on the rise, and that AMLO is essentially tied among the general voting population with Marcelo Ebrard, which quite likely explains AMLO's newfound willingness to decide on the PRD/left coalition candidacy through a national poll and not a party primary.

Direct link for the 12 questions asked here.