AMLO "accepts" Salinas debate

Andrés Manuel López Obrador said he accepted having a debate with Carlos Salinas, who notably challenged him to one a couple of days ago. Yet, there is a "but"... only if the "30 potentates" and  Enrique Peña Nieto appear for the debate as well.

Is Enrique Peña Nieto moving from Salinas to Zedillo?

Much has been written of the close relations between likely PRI presidential contender Enrique Peña Nieto and former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. A quite interesting investigation in two parts (here and here) by Jenaro Villamil offers much circumstantial evidence that Peña Nieto is actually moving away from the Salinas camp to that of former president Ernesto Zedillo, where a lot of advisers, political connections, businessmen etc connected to the last PRI president (94-2000) have seemingly established ever closer relations with the outgoing governor, to the detriment of people connected to the Salinas group.

Has Peña Nieto finally realized how potentially toxic his relations with the discredited former president may be in a general election? Or, that Zedillo's policies and programs are closer to his heart than those of Salinas?

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.

Ronald Reagan and Mexico

In line with Counterpunch's corrective, via MexFiles, to the nauseatingly hagiographic portrayals of Ronald Reagan these days - the excellent recent pieces in The Real News (search "Reagan") another exception - here's one oft-forgotten fun fact on Reagan and Mexico:

Who was the first to congratulate Carlos Salinas after the highly fraudulent presidential election of 1988, calling personally to recognize the outcome?

Reagan was.

Yes, despite highly substantiated claims of fraud, including the embarrassingly blatant "collapse" of the new and vaunted computerized voting system, as well as the brutal murder of opponents of the regime on the eve of the election, Reagan didn't even bother to hear the opposition out - and, lest we forget, that included both the left and right, including the conservative PAN - yet immediately gave aid and comfort, as it were, to what was when all is said and done an increasingly brutal and dictatorial regime that did all it could to cover up that it had either lost the election, or certainly won it by less than 50 percent (that's what Manuel Camacho told me, at least, but fact remains we'll never know).

I won't jump too far into the pitfalls of counter factual history here, but when it comes to Mexico's democratization process, it seems fair to me to posit that Reagan by congratulating Salinas that very night, did his part to kick the feet under Mexico's democracy promoters.

Carlos Salinas new political activism continues: Now in Yucatán

The "return" of Carlos Salinas to active politics in Mexico has long been heralded - following AMLO, Salinas is the mover behind every one of Mexico´s ills - yet the claim appears increasingly justified. Not only did he issue yet-another book seeking to varnish his tattered presidency; according to Milenio, his recent visit to Yucatán, where he met with his admirer, PRI Governor  Ivonne Ortega Pacheco, had as its further purpose to entice Ortega Pacheco to be Humberto Moreira´s running mate for the PRI presidency, as secretary general.

It makes perfect sense: Ortega Pacheco is in many ways the female equivalent of the Mexico State governor; like Peña Nieto, she has spent an exorbitant amount on the media promotion of her image; like Peña Nieto, she has also used her majority in the local state congress to steamroll a range of legislative initiative, ignoring input from the opposition. The most recent example of this happened just days ago, when the congress approved, in relation with the state budget, a whopping 217 articles in 48 hours.

Carlos Salinas 959-page book not on my reading list

As usually in Mexico I stock up on recent interesting books on current politics. So far I've aquired the most recent book by Carmen Aristegui on the child-raping fascist Marcial Maciel - great for bedtime stories - Soledad Loaza's recent collection of articles on the PAN, and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas' recent memoirs. Yet speaking of memoirs, one book I will shy away from for many reasons is Carlos Salinas' recent desperate 959-page attempt to reinvent himself and defend his presidency. Yet my decision was not made merely to save a few pesos, or for ideological reasons: The book appears an absolute piece of junk, combining petty attacks on many of Mexico's intellectuals with an array of stuff that is simply made up.

A few cases in point:
- Salinas attacks the presidency of Fox and his first foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda for having voted in favor of the Iraq War! Where on earth does he get this from? First, as Castañeda points out, Mexico never voted - there was never a vote in UN, to recall, despite or in spite of Colin Powell's pathetic "presentation" of WMDs - yet more importantly, Fox was the entire time against Bush's war on Iraq.
- He is accusing Castañeda of having presented the thesis of Mexico as a "failed state" - though Castañeda has consistently argued against this view.

Now I admit I am not the world's greatest admirer of Jorge Castañeda, who, despite of many notable insights, in addition to being a bit of a pompous windbag has also opined far too often on topics of which he has very little knowledge. Yet compared with Salinas, he is an intellectual giant.

If Salinas can't even get such basic facts straights, or is as stupid as to knowingly and blatantly distorting them in this manner, his apologia is hardly worth anyone's time, and your 300 pesos should rather be spent elsewhere.

Feigned anger as Alonso Lujambio marks territory as presidential candidate.

Federal Secretary of Education Alonso Lujambio, in an attack on both Marcelo Ebrard and Enrique Peña Nieto, made his biggest step yet toward presenting himself as a contender for the 2012 presidency. In Madrid, Spain, in what would have been the first debate  between the three "pre-candidates," Lujambio criticized both his possible future opponents for failing to show up this would-be coming-out party, a forum arranged by Fundación Botín, bankrolled by Banco Santander, to engage in a first open debate with the education secretary. Neither Ebrard nor Peña Nieto attended the forum. 


Lujambio huffed and puffed at this perceived affront: Against Peña Nieto, he noted:

"It alarms me that señor Peña Nieto has become an example of unilateral communication. From the monologue of the [political television/internet] ad, or that of paid news stories. It alarms me that he will only appear publicly in controlled environments, encapsulated for smiles and photos."

Yet his anger was more than a tad feigned: It was revealed that Peña Nieto had announced days ago he would not attend; as for Ebrard, when his team learned about the participation of former president Carlos Salinas, a figure loathed by the left, in the said forum, Ebrard backed straight out of it. 

What the incident did serve to do, however, was to present Alonso Lujambio as a candidate for the nomination to be PAN's presidential candidate - if any doubt remained, that is. 

Jesús Silva Herzog arrested... for drunk driving!

It might be illusory, yet one might read the incident as a small sign that the law in Mexico at least in some cases apply to poor and rich alike: Jesús Silva Herzog Flores, son of the prominent economist of the same name, a priísta of the old guard, and secretary of finance under President Miguel de la Madrid, of tourism, and ambassador to the United States under Carlos Salinas, at age 75 was put in the dock yesterday for driving with an alcohol level of 0.42, above the legal limit of 0.40. He was let go after filing a ready-made form offered by entrepreneurial coyotes who question the illegality of the new Conduce Sin Alcohol anti-drink-and-drive program in Mexico City, spending 10 hours in detention. It should be added that he hardly appeared to be too drunk, taking his arrest in stride and with humor.

The best part: When questioned as to his identity, Herzog answered: "My name is Chucho," that he was unemployed, but that he was still a very busy man... Final point: Herzog ran against AMLO in 2000 to be mayor of Mexico.

Being a prominent priísta of the old school might not just not be all that it used to be.

AMLO off the hook: IFE wisely abstains from fining him, which might have ended his candidacy for 2012

The Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) wisely abstained from fining Andrés Manuel López Obrador for illegal political propaganda, which actually might have inhibited his presidential candidacy for 2012.

While unlikely, one precedent did exist: in Quintana Roo, one "pre-candidate" for a seat in the chamber of deputies in Quintana Roo was actually disqualified for participating on the grounds that she had started campaigning for the nomination of her party before the allowed time period. In this case, the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), following political ads sponsored by the Partido del Trabajo (PT) where AMLO appeared, had complained to IFE that AMLO was similarly engaging in campaigning too early, as well as complaining that AMLO and PT were "denigrating" the presidency in another ad. 

Notably, AMLO was absolved on both accounts - yet the PT was not. Yesterday, IFE ordered the PT to pay a fine of one million pesos for the latter offense. As it were, PAN also received almost 7 million pesos in fines for their own electoral transgressions, making it a bit harder for AMLO to maintain his line that all of Mexico's political institutions are controlled by "The Mafia" and Carlos Salinas. While one would think the IFE based their decision on objective standards of legality, one might only contemplate the hell AMLO would raise had IFE deemed him to be engaging in forbidden "pre-campaigning," and thus disqualified any possibility of a 2012 candidacy.

The Return of Carlos Salinas, continued...

While many a proverbial eyebrow was raised by the presence of el innombrable during the bicentennial festivities, Carlos Salinas' return to the public view was in a quite institutional role: Felipe Calderón invited all current presidents to attend. Similarly, at a forum yesterday celebrating the 20th anniversary of the IFE, the Federal Electoral Institute, the "unnameable" was invited and held a speech. Why? Well, AMLO, to be sure, announced that Salinas' public appearance was "only to show off, to give as a fact that he is the boss of the mafia that controls all the institutions of the country, including the institute and the electoral tribunals."


As has been repeatedly noted, here and elsewhere, AMLO's constant denunciations that Salinas is the éminence grise controlling the levers of... well, just about anything in Mexico, is getting more than tiresome, and begs the question why he bothers to participate then in the first place. More ominously, by disqualifying every and all of Mexico's institutions, AMLO certainly sets the stage for future fraude protests, whether in Mexico State 2011, electing PRD's new president, electing PRD's 2012 presidential candidate, and the next miss universe, for that matter. 


Regardless, the reason is more profane: Salinas was invited to the forum for the simple fact that the IFE, in its initial form, and despite all its deficiencies, was set up in 1990 under his watch. It was, however, the first time in quite a few years that the reviled ex-president made a public discourse. It is worth reading in its entirety, and can be accessed here. 

Of note I would point to one statement in particular  that demonstrates that Salinas has hardly gotten any less cynical by the years:

"in 1988 the institutional framework was not ready, the electoral organ  was then controlled by the government and its party, and because of this the election authority could not build consensus; there was no electoral tribunal; and one could not give the results the same day of the election."

Really? The 1988 debacle, with the resulting murders of hundreds of activists, most of them from the PRD, really only happened because the "institutional framework" was not ready? 1988 happened because PRI engaged in one of the most blatant acts of fraud in its fraud-ridden history! To try to wash his hands off of this fraud by blaming it on the lack of well-functioning institutions is akin to saying, "oh, it's so terrible that we raped and killed the girl, but if only there had been police present, it wouldn't have happened."


Salinas and the PRI has much blood on their hands, and no amount of self-justification is going to wash off their responsibility for the 1988 fraud and the murders of party activists that followed. 

One question for AMLO: Why bother participating?

It's quite circular, actually: PT and AMLO have been promoting various spots or campaign ads recently, and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) has ordered some of them to be removed for violating electoral law. Most recently, AMLO and the PT launched another spot with images of former presidents such as Carlos Salinas, current president Felipe Calderón, and others, with the label "mafia" attached to them. IFE ordered it withdrawn for denigrating the presidential office.  AMLO, in turn, argues that this is merely evidence that IFE is controlled by.... you got it, the mafia. In AMLO's words, 

"We all know that the institutions have been undermined, because the serve a mafia of power, not the people."

You might consider it a preemptive strike - label IFE, TEJPJ, the congress, the PRD, whatever, as "mafia" ahead of any adversarial decisions. But it also begs the question: If the dice are so truly loaded against him, if the PAN, PRI, the PRD under Ortega for sure, all the institutions, are either part of the "mafia," are "traitors," or both - why bother participating in the first place?

Voices on the PRI's likely return to power

Many a personality has been commenting the past days on the likely return of the PRI to the Mexican presidency in 2012.  Fox, notably, seemed resigned to the idea that the PRI will win in 2012, declaring recently, "Right now, that's what dice are saying, the dice and the facts." As might be expected, Fox' predictions were hardly well received by the PAN; big shots such as party leader César Nava and PAN Senate group leader José González Morfín rejected the statements, and instead called on Fox to involve himself more in party politics rather than criticizing it from the outside. (After some heavy twittering, he now backtracked and said he "did not predict PRI's victory," but that it was to function as a warning call.

Be that it as it may, Manuel Bartlett, former PRI interior minister and governor of Puebla, somewhat estranged from his party and on good terms with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, affirmed that PRI would return thanks to the "disenchamtment PAN, but that the PRI lacks a national project and that its triumph would only be due to "mistakes and the disaster in which the PAN has occurred in the exercise of power." It is hardly a ringing endorsement of a PRI presidential candidate. Is Bartlett throwing his weight behind López Obrador?

Finally, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, defeated 2000 PRI presidential candidate, took offense at declarations made by writer Mario Vargas Llosa to the newspaper La Jornada, in connection with being bestowed an honorary degree by UNAM, where he noted that even if the PRI returns it would hardly have the absolute power of the past "perfect dictatorship," the felicitous phrase coined by the Peruvian writer to describe the 1929-2000 priiato. Labastida dixit:

"His [Vargas Lloosa's] political sympathies overtake him, his absolute conservative ideology of the right, and this prevents him from seeing that the party [PRI] has had many different governments. Lázaro Cárdenas belonged to the tricolor, as did Carlos Salinas the Gortari. PRI has not been uniform over the years. This is the first misunderstanding of this writer. The other is to claim that for 70 years one lived through a perfect dictatorship."

Really? If Labastida can come up with a better turn, I wish he'd share it. It is perhaps even more revealing that Labastida reaches all the way back to the 1930s to find a progressive PRI politician to contrast with Salinas. One would have liked to ask the senator, where would he place Peña Nieto - with the former or the latter? AMLO has the answer ready: As part of his "loyalty tour" (loyalty to him as opposed to the PRD), he gleefully exhibits a photo of an embracing Peña Nieto and Salinas. To AMLO, a victory of Peña Nieto and the return of PRI would be akin to "the return of Santa Anna."

Yet if that is the case, why is he so adamantly attacking the PAN-PRD alliances and claiming that PRI and PAN are all the same?

PRI holds its last Political Council with Beatriz Paredes as party president

While hurricane Karl might affect attendance, PRI is holding its its Political Council this weekend. The entire top PRI leadership, with the notable exception of  Enrique Peña Nieto and Manlio Fabio Beltrones, its two top candidates for PRI 2012, have reported they will attend the Council deliberations, which will swear in a few new council members, debate the party's strategy toward 2012, as well as notably try to decide how to elect its new party leader after Beatriz Paredes Rangel. Quite unusually, Humberto Moreira, PRI governor of Coahuila, has already and most publicly stated his desire to be PRI's next president, warning that the next party leader  should not be anyone who merely wants to use the office it as a trampoline to become the PRI's presidential candidate in 2012. This is a thinly veiled reference to Roberto Madrazo, the infamous Tabascan who did exactly that in 2005-6, but also a possible warning to Beatriz Paredes as well, who has not ruled out a presidential bid, as well as possibly extending her mandate as PRI president. Notably, Jorge Carlos Ramírez Marín, who will preside the Chamber of Deputies the next period, is considered to be her man, in the figurative sense. 


Humberto Moreira Valdés is scheduled to end his sexenio as governor of Coahila in Dec. 2011, and he would thus cut short his term by a year should be be the new PRI leader.  Moreira might also be referring to his possible opponent Ismael Hernández Deras, who will shortly step down as governor of Durango, but as many PRI watchers have not ruled out as a possible contender for 2012, given his seeming popularity within and outside of Durango.


Other possible PRI presidency candidates are Francisco Rojas Gutiérrez, leader of PRI's parliamentary group, and Emilio Gamboa, newly elected leader of PRI's CNOP (Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Populares), traditionally its "popular" or middle-class organization. Gamboa though is on bad terms with Paredes.


Humberto Moreira is on notably good terms with "the unnamable" (to borrow from AMLO's vocabulary) Carlos Salinas, and should Humberto Moreira manage to position himself well as PRI leader, he will likely work for the candidacy of Enrique Peña Nieto. Look for any hints of papal white smoke this weekend.

Enrique Peña Nieto's report to the Mexico State Congress: A freudian moment

Mexico is not only facing the threat of narcos:

"There is another serious threat: the struggle of power for the sake of power, which promotes ademocracy without content, and for the sole purpose of gaining power projects are negotiated between antagonistic alliances, which generate confusion and distrust in politics."

The words well be used to describe the alliances Enrique Peña Nieto has tied with the Mexican Church, which despite the PRI's historic role as a defender of the secular state has become a key ally in promoting Peña Nieto's presidential candidacy, as well as with a range of business interests of more or less shady character linked to former president Carlos Salinas. But no: the words were uttered by Peña Nieto himself, as he used the occasion of his fifth informe or report to the Mexico State congress to launch a full frontal attack on the PRI-PAN alliances. Peña Nieto knows well that should a PAN-PRD materialize for Mexico State in 2011, and should it win and thereby block Peña Nieto from leaving the state in the hands of an anointed successor, his chances for winning the presidency in 2012 would have received a brutal blow. Peña Nieto continued:

"Crime is not the only risk facing the country. Another serious threat to Mexicans is the lack of congruency in the negotiation of alliances between antagonistic visions, and this fight only leads to authoritarianism and reduced people's options and undermines the spirit of democracy."

To be able to state such nonsense with a straight face requires a good actor and Peña Nieto apparently has received some good acting lessons recently from his telenovela girlfriend. Yet to claim that the PRD-PAN alliances lead to authoritarianism and undermine democracy, when these alliances, in Oaxaca, Sinaloa, and Puebla, recently succeeded in overthrowing authoritarian state governments that had been ruled by PRI for 80 years, is such a brazen distortion of political reality that I am only bracing myself for the next installment of Peña Nieto's "reality show," increasingly removed from reality. 


More here and here.

Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez: No man of god, but a trajectory of infamy

Cardinal Juan Sandoval of Guadalajara is the subject of an article in Milenio Semanal, the weekly supplement to the newspaper Milenio. It is a highly recommended introductory summary to the dark story of Sandoval Iñiguez' life, and is not pretty reading. To begin:


On protestants: "To be a protestant, one cannot have any shame"
On women rape victims: "Women should not go around being so provoking; because of this there are so many rapes."


The cardinal's role has always been eminently political in nature, as he has organized opposition to the use of condoms, sex education, emergency contraceptive pills, and, of course, his recent activism on the subject of gay marriage. 


Yet as the article touches upon, he has also been under investigation by SIEDO (Subprocuraduría de Investigación Especializada en Delincuencia Organizada), or the special office for investigating organized crime, as well as UEIORPIFAM (the real title is far too long!), which specializes in economy crimes, for possible money laundering. The investigation petered out, allegedly due to political pressures, as Sandoval is a very powerful and well-connected man. He is very close to infamous governor of Jalisco Emilio González Márquez, who caused a scandal when he sought to "donate" more than 15 million pesos of state money to a church (the governor famously responded to the critics of this blatant theft from the state coffer and violation of church-state separation, with the exhortation that they "go fuck their mothers").


Yet there is much more. An investigation by Sanjuana Martínez relates how the cardinal was not only close to the infamous serial pedophile Marcial Maciel, of the Legionares of Christ, but helped found Casa Alberione, a church institution in Tlaquepaque that claims to treat "addictions" of pedophile priests but has been denounced as a safe house for pederasts. Sandoval, as other high members of the Mexican catholic clergy, has notoriously rejected organizations helping the church's victims such as SNAP(Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) for merely being in it for the money, rather than addressing their complaints. 


Martínez, in her 2008 investigation, interviews at depth  Jorge Carpizo - former UNAM rector, minister (justice) of the Supreme Court,  and president of the Human Rights Commission, among other offices - who was Attorney General for a period under the government of Carlos Salinas, and pressed the criminal charges of money laundering and illicit enrichment mentioned in the Milenio Semanal article. Carpizo notably accuses the investigation of having stalled after much political pressure: The cardinal simply has too much powerful friends in high places. As such, this hardly warrants much optimism regarding the recent suit against the cardinal. 


The article, Cardenal de los Ricos by Sanjuana Martínez, in Jorge Zapeda Patterson's Los Intocables from 2008, is very well worth further read on the subject of cardinal Sandoval. I'll let Carpizo have the final word here (p. 18): 

"It turns out that this gentleman commits the most serious of affronts to mankind. And that this gentleman is supposedly a representative of god on earth, yet commits so many sins. Can cardinal Sandoval Iñiguez really believe in God? Or is he simply a true hypocrite?"

More responses to Castro's declarations - and Porfirio Muñoz Ledo makes a fool out of himself

While the content of Castro's recent declarations are on their own dramatic - they confirm AMLO and PRD's old  claim of a conspiracy in 2004 to destroy his standing among the electorate, hatched by leading politicians of PRI-PAN and the Attorney General of the Republic - PRD secretary general Hortensia Aragón notes the obvious, in that Castro's declarations:

"Unfortunately it is a belated declaration; it was delayed a bit in his memoirs and only serve to ratify what we knew from the beginning: Yes, they constructed a path to derail the candidacy of Andrés Manuel.”

As noted earlier, PRD's relationship with Castro is far from harmonious, for a range of reasons, yet a key one, as PRD Federal Deputy Jesús Zambrano also pointed out, was Castro's betrayal of the Mexican Left in 1988 when he immediately accepted the results of the 1988 elections that brought to power Carlos Salinas, validating what was an obvious fraud. 


Others are more concerned with responding to the Mexican Foreign Secretariat's sharp reply to Castro's revelations, which decided the best response would be to go on the attack, dismissing the substance of his comments outright and going on the offensive by attacking the right to a free vote in Cuba. 

PRD Senator Arturo Núñez calls the SRE's response "grotesque, ridiculous, and childish," rightly pointing out that SRE refused to deal with the contents of the comments. 


PT Federal Deputy Porfiro Muñoz Ledo -  a político saltimbanqui if there ever was one - noted that the foreign secretariat's declarations broke with its historic diplomacy to Cuba, not only by conflating Castro with the Cuban government, but also by interfering in Cuban internal affairs, observations that have elements of truth. Yet Muñoz Ledo, seemingly eager to build on the AMLO-Castro connection, amazingly states that the secretariat "cannot walk around with bravado" and claim there are no free elections in Cuba.

Really, Muñoz Ledo? This is the level of analysis to be expected from a man who has held virtually any high office in Mexico apart from the Presidency? 

It was indeed a conspiracy: Fidel Castro confirms the plot against AMLO

Fidel Castro, in a lengthly letter published today, confirms what was already pretty much well established:

In 2004, leading politicians of PRI and PAN conspired to damage AMLO's standing among the electorate through leaked videos made with hidden camera where René Bejarano, a very close ally of AMLO and technically his "private secretary," was seen stuffing wads of dollars into bags, while his secretary of finance Gustavo Ponce was recorded high rolling in Las Vegas

(This must not be confused with the desafuero of 2005, which sought to prevent him from legally participating by stripping him of his immunity for prosecution and charging him, and where President Vicente Fox destroyed his credentials as a fighter for democracy due to his role in this process).

While Carlos Ahumada, the Argentine-Mexican shady businessman central to the plot, published his own auto-défense last year where confirmed much of AMLO's suspicions, today, Castro now apparently finally found it opportune to confirm this, seemingly based on the the interrogation of Ahumada when he had fled to Cuba to avoid capture by Mexican authorities for fraud against the Mexico City government. And yes, Jefe Diego was part of the plot, as was, more surprisingly to me, Santiago Creel.

Castro:

“[Carlos] Salinas de Gortari and [Diego] Fernández de Cevallos  saw the videos first and , with the Interior Secretary and the Federal Attorney General of the government of [Vicente Fox], Santiago Creel and Rafael Macedo de la Concha respectively, organized the carrying out of the formal accusation and its later disclosure, offering [Ahumada] in exchange economic help in his businesses and legal protection for him and his family."

Why now, so late? This is pretty powerful stuff, and while it will very likely never lead to an indictment, certainly should.

I should also note that I find the full article by Castro pretty dishonest as it brushes over Cuba's relationship with Salinas. Recall that Cuba immediately recognized Salinas' government, despite the obvious 1988 fraud that brought him to power - and yes, in 1988 there was an electoral fraud, unlike in 2006 - yet Castro's comments on this is pretty self-serving, as is his downplaying of the fact that Salinas was allowed to buy and own a house in Cuba (when will Cubans be allowed to do the same?).

Four years later, PT still refuses to meet with Calderón: A note on the "Workers Party"

While both PRD and Convergencia agreed to join today's "Dialogue on Security" arranged by President Felipe Calderón, the Partido del Trabajo (Workers Party, PT) refused to sit down with the president of Mexico and contribute to a national debate of the current crises in Mexico.
The party thus continues its line established after the 2006 debacle to refuse to have anything to do with what it still claims is an illegitimate government. Yet this has nothing to do with principles, but is just  another indication that the PT, desperate to retain its party registry, continues to jump as soon as AMLO says so. The party is completely beholden to him, just as AMLO, seemingly paradoxically, is also very much reliant on the PT's official party registry. It is also irresponsible to reject even sitting in on, let alone participating in, such a national debate. 


The PT poses as a leftwing, more "radical" alternative to the PRD, a party it declared as its "electoral enemy" in the 2009 Federal elections yet has joined in an uneasy coalition called DIA, short for "Dialogue for the Reconstruction of Mexico," but the history of the party exposes it as an electoral outfit that is only challenged by the Green Party (PVEM) for the prize of Mexico's must utterly opportunistic and unprincipled party. Its support for AMLO has very little to do with ideology or programmatic affinity, but everything to do with practical matters. 


One can go all the back to the very beginning, when the PT was set up in the late 1980s-early 1990s by none other than Raul Salinas, the "inconvenient brother" of Carlos Salinas, in an attempt to siphon off votes from the left. While the PT eventually took on a life of its own, I think it is very much worth recalling that before the 2006 elections, it took months of hard negotiation to bring the PT on board behind AMLO's candidacy. The PT almost went with PRI, and only joined AMLO's coalition due to generous concessions from the PRD, as the PT was handed a number of secure seats for deputies and senators far beyond what its vote tally would warrant (this was part of the pre-2007 electoral reform coalition negotiations). It is no small irony that the party that is now in true Stalinist spirit ultraloyal to AMLO in 2006 almost joined the archenemy, the PRI. 


I find the PT's lack of willingness to join this national dialogue, far from reflecting anything resembling a principled ideological stand - the party doesn't have an iota of this - to be more of the same: Pure opportunism, and irresponsible politicking. 

Peña Nieto and the church

Mexico State Governor Enrique Peña Nieto recently declared that his government and the (catholic) church has “common objectives.” That is putting it mildly. For years Peña Nieto has shamelessly courted the support of the religious right, jumping on its most regressive of social positions. I say shamelessly not principally due to the utter incongruence with the PRI’s historic secularism and reticence toward mixing religion and politics (though much of this did, to be sure, come to an end during the government of Carlos Salinas), but his breaching of electoral law to announce his love for the church. The most infamous that comes to mind is Peña Nieto's trip to the Vatican, duly covered by Televisa, where he "presented" to the pope his new wife-to-be, Angélica Rivera, and where functionaries of Mexico State lined up to get the pope´s blessing.  

Expect more expressions of love from Peña Nieto's faction of PRI to the church in the months to come. 

(His first wife died under what still appear to be rather unclear circumstances. Without exaggerating this point, it is worth having a look at this video clip, where he can´t seem to recall her exact cause of death).

Where are the Mexican philanthropists?

Yet another great article from ITAM's Denise Dresser in this weeks's Proceso. 

If important people like Oprah Winfrey, Eli Broad, Ted Turner, David Rockefeller, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, John Doerr and  Pete Peterson –among others– are ready to consider and assume the challenge of giving away half of their net worth, where are Carlos Slim, Jorge Larrea, Emilio Azcárraga, Ricardo Salinas Pliego, and other comparable Mexican  multimillionaires?