Great reportage on Mexico

Some great recent reportage on Mexico from U.S. journalists. The Los Angeles Times' Tracy Wilkinson:

The state of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City on three sides, has seen an "alarming" surge in the number of murders and rapes of women, according to several human rights organizations. Much of that increase occurred during the governorship of Enrique Peña Nieto, whose six-year term ended last fall before he went on to win this month's presidential election.

In Mexico state, violence against women has surged. Los Angeles Times, July 17, 2012.


From The Washington Post's William Booth:

Among the freshman class in the new Congress will be both the grandson and daughter of the second most powerful person in Mexico, Elba Esther Gordillo, the “president for life” of Mexico’s teachers union, who presides over a public education system where teachers buy and sell their jobs and student tests put Mexico’s kids at the bottom of developed nations.

 Mexico’s Congress presents the ‘unpresentable ones’. The Washington Post, July 14, 2012.

Calderón blocks victims law in about turn

Calderón continues to draw ire with his erratic actions or backtracking on earlier promise. Recently he sent back to the Senate the Ley General de Víctimas, or the Victims' Law, which aims to aid and compensate the victims of violence in the drug war, including creating a national register of victims, instead of signing it into law. It was in practice a veto.

Even PAN senators rejected Calderón's "observations," to the law, and returned it right away without even bothering to look at these, arguing that these added notes came too late and that it is instead Calderón's constitutional responsibility to publish it and thus enact it immediately. Unless he does so, the only remaining choice is to take it to the Supreme Court, which would in any case postpone the law for many months.

Javier Sicilia, whose victims' movement was the main impulsor of the law, called Calderón "blind" and someone who went from "betrayal to betrayal" for reneging on a much-publicized promise to back the law in a public meeting with Sicilia.

Yet Calderón seems incapable of standing down or taking absolutely any criticism for any of his actions. As El Universal put it, Calderón recently said of his administration, "'there have been achievements and mistakes,' without mentioning any in particular."

With few months remaining of his term, Calderón seems increasingly to turn a deaf ear to criticism, even from his own party. Who's a "danger to Mexico" now?


Source:
Se recrudece pugna por Ley de Víctimas; rechazan revisión. Animal Político, July 12, 2012.
Calderón está ciego, va de traición en traición: Sicilia. La Jornada, July 13, 2012.