PEMEX workers for Peña Nieto

Hardly a surprise given its forever-PRI ties, the union of PEMEX workers (STPRM) declared its "total backing" of PRI presidential candidate  Enrique Peña Nieto. Will they engage, like they did in 2000, in another blatantly illegal funding of the PRI presidency?

Notably, in the audience was union leader Carlos Romero Deschamp and Ricardo Aldana Prieto, two of the main protagonists of "Pemexgate," where it was discovered in 20002 that  the state-owned petroleum company siphoned off half a billion pesos to the PRI's 2000 campaign, and was fined a billion pesos for it.

Romero, for his part, lost his "political rights in a corruption conviction after the scandal that barred him from holding political office until last year.

Yet here he is again in the public limelight, with Peña Nieto, who despite claiming to represent a "New PRI" again and again l(literally) throws himself in the arms of its most retrograde parts.

From Milenio

Graphic: Violence in greater Mexico City area

A very useful graphic from El Universal: Murders in Mexico City and Mexico State. While murders increased 3.3 percent in the former, it jumped 17.8 in the latter, run then by presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI. The worst areas: Ecatepec and Neza.

Peña Nieto's campaign team: Graphic

An overview of Enrique Peña Nieto's campaign team, from Milenio: It has been clinically cleansed of the most polemical of PRI's figures, such as Mario Marin and Ulises Ruiz. Indeed, he just recently stressed that the presence of these criminal thugs in his campaign rallies were really only due to "institutional respect." As if that makes it any better.

In defense of Calderón: On Joaquin Villalobos

I read a while back Joaquin Villalobos' defense of the Calderón administration's handling of the war-or-not-war against the Mexican drug gangs in Nexos a while back, and found it remarkably tone deaf.

Here's an excellent piece from Insight Crime that directly takes on Villalobos' article.

Sister of Subcomandante Marcos: Peña Nieto campaign coordinator

Oh, the irony. Paloma Guillén, sister of Rafael Sebastián Guillén Vicente, better known as Subcomandante Marcos of the EZLN, will be campaign coordinator for Enrique Peña Nieto in one of Mexico's electoral circumscriptions, according to the political gossip column in Milenio.

She is currently a federal deputy from Tamaulipas.

Stunning PAN dedazo in Mexico City: Wallace mayor candidate

The executive committee of PAN decided that its candidate for Mexico City mayor will be Isabel Miranda de Wallace, who became a social activist when her son, a businessman, was kidnapped and murdered in 2005. She successfully pushed for a change to federal law to further protect victims of kidnapping.

Just a few weeks ago, PAN vowed that it would choose its candidate in a primary. This vulgar dedazo makes the PRD's method of choosing its candidate-by-poll in Mexico City nearly a civic exercise in comparison.

Senator Carlos Navarrete declines - and backs Barrales

It was not a big surprise that PRD Senator Carlos Navarrete declined from the contest to be the left's mayoral candidate for Mexico City - despite heavy campaigning he simply was not rising in the polls - but what does surprise me is that Navarrete declined in favor of Alejandra Barrales. Given Navarrete's not inconsiderable political capital, that means that Miguel Mancera will face a stronger challenge to defeat Barrales for the nomination.