Art. 24 reform: Everyone's going overboard, especially La Jornada journalists

Where to begin: Two days ago, the Chamber of Deputies approved the reform to Article 24 of the constitution that will now allow religious organizations to carry out acts of worship in public, rather than being restricted only to religious houses of worship, according to existing legislation.

The change has elicited many strong reactions, and understandably so. Given the historic role of the church in Mexico, as well as its often pernicious influence on current politics (many of them noted in this blog), one should be wary of anything resembling an attack on the secular state in Mexico.

Already, strongly secular PRI senators such as  Francisco Labastida and María de los Ángeles Moreno said they will vote against the legislation when it comes to the senate.

Yet as far as I can see, the main reasons why the PRI, PAN, and most of PRD voted in favor for the legislation was simply for Mexico to abide by its international obligations stemming from having signed the San José Agreement on Human Rights. Pro-secular NGOs, however, are worried that the legislation means far more than this.

Let that debate continue.

Yet here the nuttiness starts. La Jornada on its front page declares that the Chuchos, or the social democratic wing of the PRD (long known for its pro-secular attitude, pro grays, pro women, pro abortion, etc), agreed to vote for the legislation in return for Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a federal deputy and member of the chuchos or (more formally Nueva Izquirda) presiding the Chamber of Deputies for the coming legislative session. The claim is repeated ad nauseam in a rash of articles in the newspaper by the same two journalists, Roberto Garduño and Enrique Méndez, such as here and here. .

But where is the evidence that this is the case, other than the claims of a few of their PRD and PT fellow legislators who merely say that is so?

I've said it before: La Jornada, once a highly venerable, respected, extremely important newspaper, is becoming a caricature of itself due to its ridiculous biases and distortions of reality: You can't repeat as "fact" a highly incendiary claim just because you are opposed politically to the group stating it. 
Seriously. At no point do they even mention the San José agreements, but merely throw in the PRD group in what they call "attack on the secular state." There's more than a bit of irony here: Where was La Jornada, when gay groups, human rights group, pro choice groups, women rights group, etc, were pleading with AMLO in 2006 to take up their cause, as he had promised, in his presidential campaign? When AMLO personally blocked the vote on gay unions as Mexico City mayor? Not a word from La Jornada, which from the early 2000s on appeared more an AMLO mouthpiece (or EZLN, depending on the conjuncture), than the  serious newspaper it once was.

Speaking of nutty journalists: Some "catholic reporters" - unclear from what newspaper - brought with them a priest to "bless" the press room. Yes, to bless the Chamber of Deputies press room.

And of course, the criminal thugs of the Mexico Archdiocese - criminal in their numerous cover-ups of child-raping priests and pedophiles on all levels  - could not resist the temptation to use their favorite word, the F-word.

F for Fascist. Hugo Valdemar Romero, the spokesperson of sorts for the church, said in response to critics of the legislation that "it is incomprehensible that some parties of a fascist style continue to view this as a violation of the Constitution, as a violation of the secular state."

Leave it to Valdemar, who have always gleefully enjoyed pouring gasoline on fire,  to tack the label "fascist" to democratic political parties. Self-projection, much?

PRD and AMLO: Post-election reactions

While Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo and Luis Sánchez Jiménez accused AMLO of having much blame for the disastrous results this past Sunday, PRD leader Jesús Zambrano, still hopeful for some kind of reconciliation with  is former presidential candidate, called for not putting the blame on individuals. Alejandro Encinas also dismissed that AMLO had any blame.

AMLO himself said such criticism "doesn't even deserve a reflection, a reply."

Yet Marcelo Ebrard made it pretty clear what he felt: "Alejandro Encinas said he didn't want an alliance, we'll do it like this, well, here are the results...."

Nayarit elections: Can PRI be beat?

Here's a nice graphic from Milenio regarding the Nayarit elections. What is being elected: Governor, 30 local deputies, and 20 municipal heads. The 2011 results should be out later today at the home page of the Nayarit Electoral Insittute, IEEN. 

And another interesting graphic, on what 2012 hopefuls have visited what states. AMLO leads Nayarit - four visits - despite not backing his party's candidate, Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, but a PT/Convergencia candidate with absolute no chance of winning the election:

Nayarit: No excuses for AMLO, yet betrayal of party

In Nayarit, the PRD is not running in alliance with the PAN. Its candidate, Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, has been a man of the left his entire life, never a priísta, and rejected the suggestion he would decline in favor of PAN's candidate, Martha Elena García.

Yet AMLO, rather than backing the PRD candidate, travels to Nayarit to back Nayar Marroquín, candidate of PT and Convergencia. Not only is it a completely useless undertaking - his vote intention is minimal - but he will also take votes from the PRD candidate. So why is AMLO, a former party president and the PRD's 2006 candidate, doing this? This time there is absolutely no excuse, as in the past, where he opposed PAN-PRD alliance candidates.

This is the true face of AMLO showing: A man who have absolutely no compunction about betraying his old party, as long as it benefits his own, highly personalistic project.

Drama in Nayarit: Bullets fly in PRI's and PRD's campaign headquarters

It is hard to imagine the Nayarit gubernatorial campaign in Nayarit heating up further: Armed men entered the hotel in Tepeic where both PRI and PRD have their campaign headquarters, where after a 5-minute shootout they kidnapped a so far unidentified person. Jesús Ortega, former PRD president and now head of the PRD campaign in Nayarit, was at the hotel and tweeted about the shootout as it happened. 

PRD's gubernatorial candidate Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo also suspended campaigning in the Ruiz municipality upon recommendation from his staff. 

PRD's gubernatorial candidate in Nayarit threatened by organized crime

Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, the candidate of  Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) to be the enxt governor of Nayarit, said he has received threats from organized crime, and had therefore accepted offers of a bulletproof car and bodyguards provided by the state government.

Nayarit polls, gubernatorial election: PRI ahead 49%

The most recent Nayarit polls:

Roberto Sandoval Castañeda, PRI: 49%
Martha Elena García, PAN: 33%
Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, PRD: 17%
Nayar Mayorquín, PT/Convergencia: 1 %

Direct link to detailed .pdf file on the poll here.

Marcelo Ebrard, ever more active on the unofficial campaign trail

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard has made no secret that the is going for the nomination of Mexico's left parties for 2012, and is now demonstrating it through what is essentially unofficial campaigning in Mexico's interior.

While AMLO is years ahead in terms of promoting his candidacy through barnstorming tours across the country, Ebrard is showing increased protagonism: This weekend he went to Oaxaca, and he will then be off to the states of Nayarit and Mexico State to promote the left's gubernatorial candidates there, respectively Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo and Alejandro Encinas.

Nayarit ironies

After increasing reports that the PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit is coming to an end, for the time being, a time-out: The parties agreed to a new poll to determine the coalition's candidate.

It is worth nothing the irony here: PAN reportedly backed out when it failed to have PRD legislator Martha Elena García made its official candidate, in favor of also PRD legislator Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo: PAN clearly wants to go with the wife of the former governor (also with a PAN past) rather than Acosta Naranjo, a man who has never been a member of PRI or PAN, but is a founding member of the PRD with a long trajectory on the left before that.

But guess who AMLO's incondicionales want to be the candidate? Martha Elena García, the one favored by PAN, who in the end might be the party's candidate! The IDN faction, among others, who is led by the Bejarano/Padierna couple, were strong backers of García, and adamantly opposes Acosta. So much for their anti-PAN rhetoric. Martha Elena García, despite elected as a PRD legislator, is to boo not even a member of the PRD.

AMLO, to clarify, came out to throw plague on both houses, instead backing a PT-Convergencia candidate, Nayar Mayorquín, who has absolutely no chance of being elected - again showing that he could care less if the PRI will come out on top, as long as his opponents within the party don't come out on top.

Here's a useful interview with Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo.

Nayarit PAN-PRD alliance officially registered

While the battle over a possible PRD-PAN alliance in Mexico State will rage on for the coming weeks, in Nayarit the PRD and PAN agreed to officially register their electoral alliance with the state electoral institute. The coalition's name is "Nayarit nos une," and will dispute the governorships, 20 mayoralties, 30 local legislative seats, and 138 local governing councils at play.
Likely the candidate will be a PRD member, but it is entirely open whether it will be Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo or Martha Elena García Gómez, both national deputies; the former a lifelong activist on the left, the latter the wife of a former governor who until recently was a panista.

Nayarit 2011 elections: PAN-PRD alliance official, of sorts. For AMLO, history repeated as farce

The national presidents of PRD and PAN, Jesús Ortega and César Nava respectively, signed a "letter of intent" where the parties committed to maintain an electoral alliance for the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Nayarit, regardless of whether the candidate will be a perredista or panista.

PRD has a very strong card: Federal deputy Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a very congenial man who tends to be popular with most everyone and has moreover a reputation as an effective leader. Acosta Naranjo was just granted a leave of absence from the Chamber of Deputies, and has already started criss-crossing the state, which will hold elections July 3, 2011.

However, the wife of former governor Antonio Echavarría, Martha Elena García, also a PRD deputy, has declared she will also run for the nomination. To recall, PRD ran Nayarit 1999-2005, when AMLO enticed Antonio Echavarría to dump the PRI to join the PRD and run for governor under a broad alliance that also included the PAN  - yes, the party that AMLO is now loudly declaring it is impossible to ally with anywhere at all given "principled differences." AMLO has, of course, opposed a PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit in 2011. Of course, since 1999, much water has run under the bridge, such as the 2006 elections, which AMLO claims cheated him from victory. To be upset at PAN for 2006 is of course quite understandably, if you truly believe a fraud took place. Yet claiming "principled differences" is just pure hypocrisy, given AMLO's promotion of the previous PAN-PRD alliance in Nayarit.

Note that Martha Elena García already in 2005 wanted to become governor to succeed her husband - which should make alarm bells of nepotism ring loudly. The kicker: She was then not a PRD member, nor a PRI member, but sought the PAN nomination (!) - only the arch-opportunistic party Convergencia backed her candidacy then, which she desisted from, and renounced from the PAN. Her PRD credentials are, to put it mildly, wafer thin. Yet don't be surprised if AMLO backs her nomination: Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo, a man who has never been a PRI or PAN member yet with a life-long pedigree on the political left, is also a member of the social-democratic PRD faction Nueva Izquierda, which AMLO loathes.

Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo: "Either a single man decides or the collegiate organs decide"

Some PRD talkback after AMLO's increasingly aggressive attacks on the PRD: Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo responds to AMLO in an interview with Carlos Marin:

"Either a single man decides or the collegiate bodies decide, and I have always been a support of the idea that many heads, those of institutions, those of horizontal organizations, are better than illuminated men"

This is indeed the crux of the issue: Should the PRD follow a caudillo, or should it follow the institutional path of its own democratically elected organs. 

The interview is well watching in its entirety on youtube. 

First PRD-PAN alliance confirmed: Nayarit 2011.

The PRD state council in Nayarit voted unanimously to go in an electoral alliance in 2011 when the small coastal state is voting for governor. While the PAN won't decide until October, it is pretty much a done deal; unlike the PRD, the final decision within the PAN will be taken centrally by the PAN's National Council, which clearly supports the PAN-PRD alliances to stop the return of PRI.


PRD national deputy Guadalupe Acosta Naranjo has been preparing his candidacy for quite a while, and appears an exceptionally strong candidate to replace PRI governor Ney González.. While he is a close ally of PRD national president Jesús Ortega and a central member of the Nueva Izquierda, the largest party faction in PRD, he has pretty much buena onda with even the lopezobradoristas, and this should augur well for a unified PRD in the upcoming elections. 


However, given that AMLO has hysterically declared the PRD-PAN alliances to be "treason," regardless of whether the PRD state councils express support for them or not, Acosta Naranjo may still be in for (not so) "friendly fire" from members of is own party. Will AMLO also seek to sabotage this candidacy, as he has proclaimed he will do in Mexico State? Is Acosta Naranjo, then, also a traitor?