El Yunque wins in Guanajuato: Miguel Márquez Márquez wins

Other key PAN candidates were elected this Sunday:

Guanajuato: Miguel Márquez Márquez won over former health secretary José Ángel Córdova Villalobos to be PAN's gubernatorial candidate in Guanajuato in 2012 - and given PAN's strength in the state, that makes him very likely its next governor. Márquez was the anointed successor of current governor Juan Manuel Oliva, and is also very close to the catholic extremist organization El Yunque, which nonetheless reportedly is  divided internally these days. It was also another defeat for Calderón and also Fox, who both backed Córdova.


Jaliasco: PAN chose Fernando Guzmán, a pure yunquista, as its candidate. PAN has run the state since 1992 but will also face two strong candidates:  Mayor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez of Tlajomulco de Zúñiga (of the larger Guadalajara metro area) for the left, and Guadalajara mayor Jorge Aristóteles Sandoval Díaz of the PRI.

Assault on Abortion rights in Mexico - The Nation

A belated mention of an article I highly recommend, from The Nation and written by Mary Cuddehe:
"Mexico's Anti-Abortion Backlash."

Rosario. She was 20 and had recently completed a nine-month probation sentence. Her story was shocking to me at the time. She had taken abortion pills, fallen ill with nausea, gone to the hospital and been reported to the police. She said the staff had mistreated her, calling her names, completing the abortion surgically without anesthesia (which is standard) and allowing medical students into the room to take pictures with their cellphones..

More than half of Mexico's states, mostly in PRI-PAN legislative alliances, have passed a ley aborto equivalent to the wacko "life at conception" laws recently defeated in the state of Mississippi. The article in particular highlights the state persecution of citizens in run by one of the most reactionary and ultra-right sections of the PAN political elite. Keep in mind, however, that most of the extremist legislation passed when alleged "progressive" Beatriz Paredes was PRI's national leader. She may well hold progressive views, but did not lift a finger to stop her party, traditionally quite secular, from allying with the traditionally pro catholic PAN.

... In 2009 in the southern state of Quintana Roo, a Mayan woman was wrongfully jailed for what turned out to be a spontaneous miscarriage, and in 2010 an 11-year-old girl who was raped and impregnated by her stepfather was denied an abortion because she was four months pregnant—one month past the allowable twelve weeks. 

 Read this excellent and harrowing investigative piece of original reporting here.

PRI denounces ghost companies in Guanajuato

Local PRI Deputy Miguel Ángel Chico Herrera denounced the government of Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez in Guanajuato for having made no-bid purchases for the the government worthy 272 million pesos, from what appears to be simply "ghost companies" - meaning they have no address or physical location.

It is not the first time the ultra-conservative yunquista Oliva faces such accusations of dirty dealings, including juicy contracts doled out to close relatives.

Guanajuato: Defeat for El Yunque and Governor Juan Manuel Oliva

PAN in Guanajuato elected local deputy Gerardo Trujillo Flores to the important post of state party leader, ahead of the 2012 gubernatorial contest.

This is notable as he beat out Alejandra Reynoso Sánchez, the candidate of Governor Juan Manuel Oliva, who is identified with the far-right Catholic secret society El Yunque, as is outgoing state leader Fernando Torres Graciano.

This is a win for federal health secretary José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, a relatively progressive panista, who wants to be governor, yet is opposed by the governor and El Yunque.

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.

Yet another Guanajuato functionary steps down after "irregularities"

Jorge Armado Aguirre Torres was until he was removed this week ecretary of health in the Guanajuato state administration. After "irregularities" was detected in the managing of the Seguro Popular, the health insurance program for the poorest Mexicans without a job-provided health insurance in the formal sector, Aguirre Torres became the eighth state official of secretary rank to step down in the four years since Juan Manuel Oliva became the governor of Guanajuato.

Juan Manuel Oliva has been embroiled in a wide range of very dirty scandals the past months - read more here and here - that directly implicate the yunquista governor. As ever more attention is put on his scandal-ridden government, expect more stories to surface the coming months.

More on dirty deeds in Guanajuato: Even dirtier than imagined

The Guanajuato state government earlier faced harsh criticism after a public audit revealed that Governor Juan Manuel Oliva had spent two million pesos to buy foodstuffs with public money, to be distributed by the state, from the mother of his son-in-law.

It gets worse: It has now been revealed that the pious governor - the same who has in recent days issued blatantly unconstitutional calls to reintroduce religious education in the schools to instill "principles and values" could use a further refresher course on ethics himself, not to mention laws on corruption and conflicts of interests.

The new revelation:  The state government has spent at least 80 million pesos purchasing foodstuffs from  a company belonging to the daughter-in-law of Elías Villegas Torres, the regional leader for the ultra catholic extremist secret society El Yunque. The company, mind you, was created only four months after the coming to power of Oliva in late 2006, yet managed to beat out well-established competitors for contracts to supplying the state's DIF, which the current investigation has revealed as something close to a snake pit of crooks.

As for "principles and values," at least the way most decent citizens recognize them, they appear increasingly absent from the state government of Governor Juan Manuel Oliva.

Spoken like a true yunquista: Guanajuato governor wants "religious education" in the schools

Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva, following up on a "proposal" from the archbishop of León, declared he was in favor of "analyzing" whether to reintroduce "religious education" in the schools in Guanajuato.

According to Oliva, who is a member of the extremist catholic secret El Yunque society:
"I am a believer that parents should choose the education for their children, and because of this right that they have, we will need to consider a request of this nature." Oliva also added that even though the secular state remains "protected," this does not imply living in a society that is "absent of principles and values."

Where does one start... for one, to even call it "religious education" is disingenuous. What Oliva wants is to indoctrinate the children with the catholic gospel, period - no need pretending. And exactly whose parents are demanding it? Yet even more fundamentally still: It is utterly pathetic to hear the old canard of these believers in invisible friends chime in on "principles and values." Does not teaching catholicism truly mean not teaching "principles and values"? Does this religion really have a monopoly on teaching children good "principles and values"? Unfortunately, this is what ignoramuses like Oliva believe in - that absent the (highly selective, mind you) teaching of bronze-age scriptures, students will simply not learn the good values and principles Olivia is obliquely referring to.

Is it truly so that the more one teach catholic values, the better human beings the students will come out?  Is it truly so that in societies that do not teach religion in this manner in school - Scandinavia, most Western European countries - its students turn out to have less "principles and values" than those who are indoctrinated in catholic values?  Let's put it this way: Quite a few scientific studies do show a clear correlation with church attendance/religiosity, and "social trust" and crime rates. Unfortunately for Oliva, the relationship runs in the other direction: The less religious a society is - and the less religious its education system is - the better off a society is.

And lest we forget: Guanajuato is one of the states in Mexico with the highest rates of teen pregnancy. Guess what state does not teach any sex education in the schools?

Backlash against Oliva's attempt to reintroduce catholic indoctrination in schools

The foolish attempt by Governor Juan Manuel Oliva of Guanajuato to reintroduce, absent since the Revolution, catholic indoctrination in nominally secular state schools, met with a barrage of criticism: Legislators from not only the left as well as the PRI, but notably also the PAN, condemned Oliva's open disregard for the Mexican constitution, which does not allow for religious indoctrination in the schools.

Most stridently, PRD Senator Graco Ramírez and PRI national deputy Alfonso Navarrete Prida warned that should Oliva follow through on his plan, one response might be an impeachment trial in Congress for conspiring against the Mexican constitution. Let's see how far Oliva is willing to go with his neo-cristero crusade simulacrum.

Spoken like a true yunquista: Guanajuato governor wants "religious education" in the schools

Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva, following up on a "proposal" from the archbishop of León, declared he was in favor of "analyzing" whether to reintroduce "religious education" in the schools in Guanajuato.

According to Oliva, who is a member of the extremist catholic secret El Yunque society:
"I am a believer that parents should choose the education for their children, and because of this right that they have, we will need to consider a request of this nature." Oliva also added that even though the secular state remains "protected," this does not imply living in a society that is "absent of principles and values."

Where does one start... for one, to even call it "religious education" is disingenuous. What Oliva wants is to indoctrinate the children with the catholic gospel, period - no need pretending. And exactly whose parents are demanding it? Yet even more fundamentally still: It is utterly pathetic to hear the old canard of these believers in invisible friends chime in on "principles and values." Does not teaching catholicism truly mean not teaching "principles and values"? Does this religion really have a monopoly on teaching children good "principles and values"? Unfortunately, this is what ignoramuses like Oliva believe in - that absent the (highly selective, mind you) teaching of bronze-age scriptures, students will simply not learn the good values and principles Olivia is obliquely referring to.

Is it truly so that the more one teach catholic values, the better human beings the students will come out?  Is it truly so that in societies that do not teach religion in this manner in school - Scandinavia, most Western European countries - its students turn out to have less "principles and values" than those who are indoctrinated in catholic values, say e.g. in conservative regions in southern Italy? Let's put it this way: Quite a few scientific studies do show a clear correlation with church attendance/religiosity, and "social trust" and crime rates. Unfortunately for Oliva, the relationship runs in the other direction: The less religious a society is - and the less religious its education system is - the better off a society is.

And lest we forget: Guanajuato is one of the states in Mexico with the absolute (and relative) higher number of teen pregnancy, as well as rapes and abuses of women. Guess what state does not teach any sex education in the schools, thanks to pressure from the Catholic Church?

If Oliva is truly interested in inculcating good "principles and values" in Guanajuato, religious education in general, and the pernicious teachings of of the Catholic Church in particular, much be lessened, not strengthened.

Dirty dealings in Guanajuato: Blatant conflict of interest in government purchases

In an audit, the secretariat of public administration in Guajanato issued a damning critique of the state's DIF, or the state's agency for family development, a social assistance association of sorts usually run by the wife of a governor, who may or may not have any qualifications whatsover to handle this job,

Regardless, in Guanajuato the audit found a "lack of probity in the use of public resources," perhaps most notoriously the decision by state governor Juan Manuel Oliva to spend almost two million pesos of tax payer money buying honey, to be distributed by the DIF, from the mother of his son-in-law.
While apparently technically not illegal, to call it a "conflict of interest" would be putting it mildly.

The probe also criticized a range of other aspects of the government's (lack of) transparency and probity in its management of public resources.

Guanajuato is one of the most retrograde states in Mexico, run by a particularly reactionary wing of the PAN, many of whom are members of the ultra-right catholic El Yunque society.

José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, a most reasonable guanajuatense

José Ángel Córdova, secretary of health, has long expressed interest in contending for the governorship of Guanajuato in 2012. Compared with most any other panista from Guanajuato, he comes across as a most reasonable man, in an interview in today's El Universal. On abortion, allowed in the Federal District:

Q: "Would you accept a law like in the Federal District?"

A: "In a given moment, if one governs, one governs for all, and laws are created by legislators, and one must respect the laws because we are a country of institutions."

Under the mantle of a "lesser evil" per excellance for the Yunque-infected, PAN-dominated state of Guanajuato: ¡Córdova, gubernador!

PAN nervous about losing Guanajuato

Prominent panistas are seeking to assure that there is no danger of a split in the PAN guanajuatense, following the firing of Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez from the state administration of Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez. National party President César Nava, who is holding a very low profile these days and will step down in a few weeks as PAN leader, broke his recent silence by declaring simply that "In Guanajuato the heard of  horses is large, how great, this is not a problem at all." Yet it certainly is: Mosqueda Martínez is not even a PAN member, represents the most reactionary wing of the PAN, and is loathed by prominent panistas that include the head of the state party branch, who already declared he would not vote for him.

Even former President Vicente Fox, who hails from Guanajuato and governed the state 1995-199, at the opening of a local PAN headquarter in León called for unity, "because we cannot let go of the governorship nor of the  Presidency." The growing Guanajuato schism between PAN and the catholic extremists of El Yunque may tear the party apart, and not only in this state.

Schisms also happen on the political right: El Yunque-PAN fight in Guanajuato heats up

Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez renounced as the  Secretario de Gobierno, or secretary of state of Guanajuato's state government, in order to pursue the PAN's nomination to be its candidate for goverrnor.
While leaving government 20 months before the election seem to suggest that Mosqueda Martínez was fired for his ambitions rather than having left voluntarily, this would in itself too noteworthy.
(For instance, on the national level, many may recall how Vicente Fox kicked out then-Secretary of Energy Felipe Calderón for his activism, only to have Calderón return to snatch the nomination ahead of Fox' favorite Santiago Creel).

What is, however, noteworthy is that Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez is a very prominent member of the ultra-right catholic extremist organization El Yunque, and very close to Elías Villegas Torres, the man who has often been signaled as the leader of this secretive organization. Now, Mosqueda Martínez will fight against the PAN party machinery to be its gubernatorial candidate, a party of which he is not even a member: He is a yunquista, not a panista.

Governor of Guanajuato Juan Manuel Oliva has often been accused of being in the hands El Yunque, yet the current affair serves to suggest a schism between more moderate sectors of PAN, and the Yunque.  Oliva's desired heir apparent is his minister of social development, Miguel Márquez, yet he is apparently not too far to the right for the yunquista. Nor, to be sure, is federal Secretary of Health José Ángel Córdova, who has long expressed his desire to enter the fight for the nomination.

The case of Gerardo Mosqueda Martínez seems to me quite interesting for two reasons:
1) It is indicative of the ever-loosening control of Felipe Calderón of PAN, and certainly show should el yunque manage to install Mosqueda as its candidate
2) The PAN-Yunque coalition is in Guanajuato under some serious strain, and a schism might well happen in the local state branch of PAN.

On a national level, just like the U.S. Republican party, who struggle with incorporating their own tea party loonies (without exaggerating this parallel), the Mexican PAN is an uneasy mix of social reactionaries and ultraconservatives, with relatively liberal minded and moderate christian democrats, such as Fox. While the coalition has held up since 1939, more or less, it may not last forever, especially following the wear-and-tear of eight years in government. 

Secretary of Health José Ángel Córdova and Guanajuato: Kicking against the El Yunque pricks

It is an open secret, which makes it no secret at all, that José Ángel Córdova Villalobos, federal secretary of health, is very interested in becoming the next governor of Guanajuato. A couple of days ago, ahead of the the Semana Binacional de Salud, or Binational Health Week, a major international health conference that just happened to be arranged in his native Guanajuato, Córdova Villalobos warned that the PAN could lose the state in 2012, due to internal "fractures" in the ruling Partido Acción Nacional, PAN.

What the health secretary is really saying is that due to the extremist policies of the state government, headed by Governor  Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, it might lose the state in 2012. The local state branch of PAN is in Guanajuato in hands of El Yunque, an extreme catholic far right falangist secret organization, and the public policies of Oliva Ramírez' government have been disaster: The state was recently forced, due to local and international pressure, to release scores of women locked up for having had miscarriages and abortions, and has an extremely retrograde education system that virulently fights any sex education or information on contraceptives. Not coincidentally, the state has Mexico's highest rate of teen pregnancy. It is also the only one of Mexico's 32 federal entities that has refused to pass a law to prevent violence against women. So much for "family values."

José Ángel Córdova is painfully aware that the backlash against these extreme policies may well cause PAN to lose the state, and this is the real reason behind his thinly veiled attack on the current PAN government of Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez. It would serve the PAN and Mexico well to rid its party organization of the rightwing extremists of El Yunque; a win for Córdova in Guanajuato in 2012 - he is both a PAN moderate, and as a health professional is painfully aware of the destructive effect on El Yunque's influence on policy - would only be a good thing.

Rumble in Guadalajara: Nearly 100,000 turn out to reject PAN governor

It might not have superceded 100,000, the number the organizers behind Thursday's march in Guadalajara, Jalisco, hoped to surpass, but the march to protest Governor Emilio González Márquez' education policies, or lack thereof, was nonetheless a stunning success. González Márquez, a notorious alcoholic and public drunkard who  tightly allied with the most reactionary elements of the Mexican Catholic Church and has been involved in scandals too numerous to recount here, has faced barrages of criticism for starving the UdeG, or Universidad de Guadalajara, of hundreds of millions of pesos in federal funds that González Márquez refuses to release.

Apparently, as González Márquez became aware of the magnitude of the march against him, he showed up drunk unexpectedly at the home of former rector of UdeG Raúl Padilla López to threaten and beg him to cancel the march, without success, and promised to finally release the money the university is entitled to from the federal government. Excerpt from the dialogue:

González Márquez: "Raúl, are you drunk yet"? 

Padilla López: "Me, no. You are!"

 González Márquez: "No man, this is the way I work"

I couldn't make up this stuff if I tried.

"I am free, because I am innocent": Seven imprisoned Guanajuato women finally free

María Araceli Camargo Juárez, Ofelia Segura Frías, Yolanda Martínez Montoya, Liliana Morales Moreno, Ana Rosa Padrón Alarcón, Susana Dueñas Rocha and Bonifacia Andrade Hurtado were finally set free yesterday, after spending between two and seven years in prison accused of infanticide. The real issue, of course, is abortion, which is illegal in Guanajuato, yet this is only half the story: While abortion only carried a penalty of maximum three years, the women were accused of infanticide, which carries a significantly stricter penalty (though after UN pressure, the government succumbed to reform the laws); some had received up to 27 years in prison for this.  

But the kicker is this: Most of the women, all poor campesinas, appear to simply have had miscarriages, having suffered beatings - several of them had been raped - and were moreover coerced to confess to their "crime" by state prosecutors.

Yet rather than apologize for this travesty of justice, the state government, headed by Governor Juan Manuel Oliva, stubbornly and stupidly refuses to admit it did a mistake and that the women were innocent. Given the fighting spirit of these women and their clamor to have their name cleared, the matter will now most likely move to the courts, ensuring more bad publicity for Juan Manuel Oliva, who tried to please the women with promises of housing assistance, and offered state vehicles to transport them, which they rejected. 

Yolanda Martínez Montoya, in prison for more than six years, gets the final word:

"I want nothing. I want to be me. I don't want to be tied to anyone who has something to do with the government, because they caused me so much harm. I want nothing from them"

Reporter: "Was the government's offer in exchange for keeping silent?"

"It could be. One may deduce using logic."

Imprisoned women to be set free, yet Guanajuato scandal not over for Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez

The state congress in Guanajuato, following a visit by a UN delegation that sharply criticized the state government for its treatment and criminalization of women, voted 36 to one to reduce the penalties for "infanticide" of one's own children, from 36 to 3-8 years of prison. 


Only one deputy, Elvira Paniagua (PAN) from Celaya district, voted against the reduction of the maximum penalty. 


This, of course, has nothing to do with vicious child killers, but refers to the drastic penalties given to women - most of them poor, illiterate, and of indigenous origin - accused of having had an abortion, whether they were to blame or not. 


One likely consequence is that María Araceli Camargo Juárez, Ofelia Segura Frías, Yolanda Martínez Montoya, Liliana Morales Moreno, Ana Rosa Padrón Alarcón and Susana Dueñas Roch will be set free. They are all poor campesinas  who were given draconian prison sentences, simply locked up for having aborted, including for miscarriages. 


The state administration signaled the women would be set free soon, possibly through a decree by the governor,  but was quick to emphasize this was not the same as exonerating them. This reflects not only stubbornness, but mere stupidity: The government under Juan Manuel Oliva was eager to get this case over with, as Oliva harbors presidential ambitions, yet now, rather than to admit its mistake, it will now likely be faced with an appeal by the women to the Mexican Supreme Court to have their names cleared. The case has the potential to bring even more spotlight on the governor as a radical reactionary, and damage his chances of becoming the PAN's nominee for the presidency. 

At, times, one truly reaps what one sows.

United Nations react to Guanajuato's war against women

The state persecution and high levels of violence toward women in Guanajuato is drawing the attention of the United Nations. Its Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights noted the "worrying levels of violence, against women, including sexual," in the state, whose state government is run by the ultra-conservative wing of the PAN and where the extremist catholic organization El Yunque has particular influence. Some tangible effects: Persecution of women who have aborted, including having had miscarriages; ignorance of high levels of violence toward women; and the banning of sex education in schools. As noted, Guanajuato's levels of teen pregnancy are as a consequence exploding. 

After having visited several women locked up in jail accused of having had an abortion - illegal in the state - the UN mission presented formal  several recommendations to state governor Juan Manuel Oliva to protect women's rights in the state. 

The observer mission confirmed "the persistence of  cultural patterns that encourage discrimination against women, while limiting the full exercise of sexual and reproductive rights."

One can only hope that the renewed international spotlight on Guanajuato may force the government into backtracking in its war against women.

On the subject of Guanajuato : Teen pregnancy explodes due to sex ed prohibition

On the subject of Guanajuato and the catholic church, La Jornada reports that in the last four years, teen pregnancies have increased by a massive 40 percent. This is a state where the catholic church has massive influence on the PAN state government and on social policy: Guanajuato's yunquista governor, Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez, has prohibited nearly any sexual education in school and attempts at family planning. Reports La Jornada: "The secretary of educaiton, Alberto Diosdado... recommends students that they conserve their virginity until marriage, practice abstinence, avoid contraceptives, and reject homosexuality."
In addition, the state government sends the police to harass family planning organizations.


The church, for its part continues to fight tooth and nail against condoms and birth control pills. And sadly, here is the direct result of these irresponsible and utterly irrational policies, namely a massive and highly predictable rise in teen pregnancies. How in the world is this consistent with "family values," nominally held so dear by the church?