Emilio González Márquez well on his way to bankrupt Jalisco

The drunkard and foul-mouthed governor of Jalisco, Emilio González Márquez, is well on his way to bankrupting  the state of Jalisco. According to Milenio, which cites a report to the state congress, the state's debt has quadrupled to nearly 15 billion pesos - all in barely four years of "governing" the state.

I'll let the article speak for itself:

"The growth in liabilities of the state has not come solely from the procurement of new loans, but also for renegotiations of debts inherited by the governor, where he has favored the payment of interest, which means a growing burden on the state's finances, currently amounting to 1.9 billion pesos annually. To that amount must be added the 1.5 billion pesos more authorized by the congress for security purposes, and, the case it will be authorized, 5.612 billion more pesos which the governor has asked for, for various projects"

I do not think the end of González Márquez' government will be a happy one.

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.

Stratfor: Mexican legislators are not amused

Texas-based Stratfor - those of the stratospherically priced intelligence analyses, which unfortunately at times decidedly cross the line of the sublime to the utterly ridiculous - published online its most recent "Mexican Drug War Update."

Not quite willing to dole out the required dough for this quarterly report, I have yet to read it, but from secondary sources it appears to suggest that Mexican President Felipe Calderón is going soft on the Sinaloa cartel and El Chapo in order for them to liquidate their comparatively more vicious competitors.

Yet Calderón's defenders have marched to the barricades, and they are not who you might think: According to La Jornada, PRD and PT legislators essentially dismiss the idea that the government is engaging in "pacting" of any kind with the narcos; rather, the difficulties of getting to Chapo is rather a reflection of not only the cartel's superior organization and intelligence, but crucially also the significant social support Chapo allegedly has built up.

Felipe González, PAN senator, moreover claims that Stratfor has erred in the past, such as its claim that most of the weapons showing up with the drug gangs in Mexico come from Central America and not from the United States - an assessment, to be sure, very few analysts share.

Gonzáles also dryly adds that Strafor as well "charges a lot."


Ouch. 

If you love Mexico, you can't vote for PAN?

"No one who loves Mexico can ally with or vote for the party of war, PAN."

This rather stunning slogan comes from AMLO's Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), in a sharp attack on Calderón and PAN. All gloves have apparently come off, and there seem to remain no holds barred in AMLO's campaign for 2012, well under way: The most recent video, featured on the home page of AMLO's movement, makes the further claim that Calderón launched the military offensive against the drug gangs in order to legitimize his government, following the contested 2006 election, but also to to "the dirty work" for United States.

I am hard pressed to imagine how one can get any dirtier than this, which is moreover sadly ironic given that one of AMLO's main arguments in 2006 was the very dirty campaign from PAN: The pupil has now seemingly overcome the master.

In essence: If you vote for my opponent (or ally with them), you don't love your country.
How to top this?

Americas Quarterly on Mexico: Arjan Shahani's Distortion of Reality

Arjan Shahani has a blog hosted by Americas Quarterly, where he opines on things Mexican. 

AQ is published jointly by the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas. Given that the latter is a business organization, founded by David Rockefeller in 1965, and an ardent proponent of neoliberal economics, it should hardly be a surprise that a very business-friendly discourse permeates Shahani's blog - all fine and well, of course; it is certainly his prerogative to promote this agenda.

Another thing is to get one's facts straight, or to quite blatantly distort empirical reality. I have earlier had several quibbles with his column in this regard. Most recently he refers to  PRD as the "Partido Revolucionario Democrático." It truly beats me how one can live in Mexico and blog on Mexican politics and not even get the name of one of the country's main parties straight.

Yet my main point is this: He attacks Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his MORENA movement for "appealing to the disheartened lower classes and sowing seeds of division with over-simplified, anti-business message." He acknowledges - it would be impossible not to  - that "a huge gap between rich and poor continues to exist," but insists that "it is a distortion of reality to wholly blame the private sector. For one, the government is not broke, nor does it lack the resources to spearhead development initiatives. For another, it
significantly taxes the private sector."

Of course it is a distortion to only blame the private sector - who on earth wants to pay taxes voluntarily? Clearly much of the blame lies with a weak federal government incapable of asserting itself to tax better not only Mexico's corporations, but also the rich in general. Yet let us be clear: The blame also lies with them; they have together fought tooth and nail against attempts to tax them, and mostly with great success: Despite calls from OECE, again and again, that Mexico strengthen its tax-raising capability: Mexico has by far the 
lowest level of tax revenue income as a percentage of GDP among any OECD countries.

Another perspective: In Latin America, only Haiti - Haiti - gets less of its GDP from taxes than Mexico.

Perhaps some individual private businesses in Mexico are overtaxed, and certainly the explosion of the informal economy is a huge challenge to a state wanting to raise revenue, but let's not distort the obvious: The rich in Mexico pay very little taxes and are vastly under taxed.

If you're serious about Mexico's development, go after them, and not just one of the messengers criticizing them. Indeed, who is the true "divider" in Mexico: AMLO, or the rich who have successfully fought off nearly every effort to tax them fairly?

Does SME really have no shame?

About a week ago, the SME again created absolute chaos in Mexico City, using disturbingly violent methods. Members of the electricians union damaged and burnt cars, beat up police officers, a fireman, one photographers, and two reporters, and 11 violent thugs were arrested.

Even Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who seeks the votes of the SME and their extended family members and has been extremely lenient toward SME's many disruptive demonstrations, condemned the violence.

SME leader Martín Esparza Flores first claimed that the damage was done by people who had "infiltrated" SME, then accepted that the 11 arrested were SME members, yet now demands the release of these 11 claiming they are political prisoners.

Beyond emphasizing that the SME truly has no shame and will do nothing to curb the violence of its members, the false comparison is truly an insult and a disservice to true political prisoners world wide, of which there are thankfully less and less of in Latin America. 

Mexico's interior ministry incapable or unwilling to stand up to church violations

Mexico's electoral institute IFE earlier found that Hugo Valdemar, the attack-dog spokesperson of the Archdiocese of Mexico, had violated Mexican law by calling for catholics not to vote for the PRD.
IFE then sent the case to the Minstry of the Interior for it to decide sanction. It is worth noting here that IFE had first refused to touch the case, but was ordered to do so by the TEPJF, the electoral tribunal.

Yet what does the Interior Ministry, headed by José Francisco Blake Mora, do? It sends the case back to IFE again! In other words, it cowardly refuses to do its job and actually apply a sanction to Valdemar, who it has already been established broke the law.

This case, serious as it is - should the church use its state-funded organization in favor or against certain political parties? - is becoming a true joke. As 2012 is approaching quickly, it is really urgent that this obvious impunity of the church to break the law must end.