Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Cristina Fernández in Mexico

Argentine President Cristina Fernández is visiting Mexico, after the postponement of an earlier planned trip. She notably met first with Carlos Slim and other businessmen - Slim is said to consider major investments in Argentina. Both Fernández and her foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, has expressed criticism of U.S. drug fighting strategies: Timerman noted that,
"we already know from where the guns come, and who consumes the drugs; what Mexico provides, is the dead"
Fernández expressed solidarity with Mexico over the scourge of the drug cartels, and called for the more developed countries to reduce consumption, weapons smuggling, and money laundering.

All pretty sensible to me.

The best allies money can buy: The Arce-Círigo brothers, now with PRI

After Carlos Loret de Mola first noted the development in his column, it's now official:
The Arce-Círigo brothers - René Arce and Víctor Hugo Círigo - have amazingly enough, after ditching the PRD in 2009, lined up behind PRI. The Mexico City power brokers - their main stronghold remains Iztapalapa - have now allied with the PRI and Peña Nieto, Senator René Arce announced yesterday.

The El Universal article puts its best in its opening line: "René Arce has always played to the highest bidder," as has his brother. The two ditched the PRD in 2009 when they failed to win control of Iztapalapa, which they earlier took turns governing,  and have now quite notably lined up behind Eruviel Ávila for Mexico State governor. Former PRD deputy Ruth Zavaleta, who also governed the borough Venustiano Carranza, is also closely allied with the brothers (she is the girlfriend of René), and was the first to publicly join Peña Nieto and the PRI, in the failed PRI campaign in Guerrero (she earlier quixotically tried to be the gubernatorial candidate there).

Outside of Mexico City - the importance of the newfound allies lies, of course, in the proximity of the former to key urban zones of Mexico State, which in places completely overlap - an additional new ex-PRD ally is José Diego León Díaz, a former regidor of Neza, who claimed to bring with him 4,000 PRD supperters over to the side of Eruviel Ávila.

PRD candidate for governor Alejandro Encinas said it best: "unfortunately, there are some compañeros who can be bough." The same, of course, applies eminently well to the Arce-Círigo brothers.
Yet beyond the PRD woes, while hardly new, it is a deeply troubling development, as one can hardly blame citizens for their cynicism toward politicians and political parties, with such a spineless lack of ideological and party loyalty.

For Eruviel Ávila, and of course for Peña Nieto in 2012 and whomever the PRI postulates for Mexico City governor, this is an important tactical victory.

José Ángel Córdova goes for Guanajuato - what will El Yunque do?

Mexico's very able secretary of health, José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, will step down in September in order to seek the PAN's nomination to be governor of Guanajuato.

Guanajuato Governor Juan Manuel Oliva will not be happy with this. He is instead pushing his own candidate, namely his state secretary of social development, Miguel Márquez Márquez, linked to the secret extremist Catholic society El Yunque, as is another former government secretary and Yunquista, Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez.

Yet Córdova - a far more liberal-minded panista -  remains very popular in Guanajuato. He has even kept up his local practice and continued to receive patients - all the while remaining the federal secretary of health. It will truly be a challenge for El Yunque, despite their strength in Guanajuato, to take on such credentials.

INM collusion with organized crime continues

An in-depth story in yesterday's El Universal is a recommended read on the plight of migrants in Mexico, who, as the priest Heyden Vázquez Medina of the migrant shelter Hogar de la Misericordia in Arriaga, Chiapas details, are continually abused by INM agents often in direct collusion with organized crime.

How many of these stories will it take before INM head Salvador Beltrán del Río stop sheepishly dismissing them as "exceptions"?